The arrest this week of former Pakistan prime minister and cricket legend Imran Khan has triggered nationwide protests targeting military and other institutions, some of which have turned violent.
Pakistan’s political crisis has worsened significantly since Khan lost a no-confidence motion in parliament and was ousted from power last April. Since then, Khan’s populist rhetoric has stoked divisions in society, leading to extreme polarisation and the violent reactions we’ve seen this week.
Khan takes on the military
Khan began sowing these divisions even before he left office. Before his ouster, he had blamed Pakistan’s one-time close ally, the United States, for conspiring against his government and trying to push him from power.
His party, the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, has a long history of labelling its political opponents as Western slaves, so this narrative reverberated among his supporters.
Khan then shifted his anger towards the army and its then-chief, General Qamar Bajwa, claiming they were trying to bring down his government.
Khan and the military were once close. Soon after he rose to power in 2018, many of the leaders in his party claimed it was perhaps the first time a civilian government and the military establishment were on the same page in Pakistan.
But the relationship started to fray over the appointment of a new head of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, in 2021. Khan wanted the then-chief of the agency, General Faiz Hameed, to continue in the role, while the military wanted someone else.
Then, last November, Khan survived an assassination attempt at a political rally in Punjab province. A day later, he pointed the finger at three senior government figures as being behind the attack – the new prime minister, the interior minister and a senior intelligence official.
The military establishment issued a statement accusing Khan of fabricating the allegations. Khan responded immediately by saying that he stood by his allegations.
Khan’s supporters march through the streets after he was targeted in the assassination attempt. Mohammad Ramiz/AP
While political violence has a long history in Pakistan, it has certainly increased in the wake of Khan’s populist attacks on the military and other institutions and the political polarisation that has ensued. The new government’s pursuit of Khan has also sparked anger among his supporters.
After removing Khan’s party from power last year, the Pakistan Democratic Alliance – an alliance of several other parties, including the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Pakistan People’s Party – formed a government and immediately began targeting Khan and his party officials in whatever ways possible.
In the so-called “Toshakhana case”, the government accused Khan and his wife of corruption for illegally keeping gifts given to them by other countries. The case refers to the Toshakhana department in the government responsible for storing expensive gifts given to public officials. Just last week, the Islamabad High Court found the case to be illegal and dismissed it.
Khan has faced a flood of other allegations, however, ranging from corruption to sedition. By some counts, he faces more than 100 cases around the country. There are elements of revenge politics here because Khan’s government had also targeted rival political leaders through corruption charges when it was in power.
The new government has made several attempts to arrest him in recent months. A small team from the federal police was sent to his house in Lahore in March, but faced heavy resistance from Khan supporters. A popular slogan emerged among Khan’s supporters:
“Khan is our red line”. It was a warning to the state not to arrest him.
Although the government has tightly controlled the mainstream media, Khan’s party has reached its supporters through social media to stoke dissent. And despite crackdowns on Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf leaders, party workers and Khan sympathisers for speaking out against the state on social media, the government hasn’t been able to control the simmering anger across the country.
Khan’s arrest sparks violence
This week, Khan was finally arrested on corruption charges related to another case involving the Al-Qadir University Trust. Khan is accused of using state funds to compensate a real estate giant, Malik Riaz, for land that would be used to build a new university called Al-Qadir.
Khan’s lawyers challenged the legality of the arrest, but the High Court upheld it. Doubts have remained over whether the authorities followed the proper procedures, however, so it was not surprising that Khan’s supporters reacted the way they have. Within hours of the arrest, party workers and supporters gathered in many major cities and began openly attacking key military buildings.
The headquarters of Pakistan’s army was attacked by a mob in Rawalpindi, as was the house of a corps commander in Lahore. This is unprecedented – the army headquarters have only ever been targeted by terrorists before.
The military was singled out due to Khan’s earlier allegations the army conspired to oust him from power and also the fact he was arrested by rangers and not the police.
So far, no one knows Khan’s exact location or whether he is under civilian or military custody. It is very likely the protests will continue – and with that, increasing levels of violence – until Khan is released.
Zahid Shahab Ahmed is a chief investigator in a research project called ‘Religious populism, emotions and political mobilisation’, funded by the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT University
The Albanese government has made bold environmental promises over the last year. Given the parlous state of nature in Australia, these commitments are important.
The promises include ending new extinctions, fixing national nature laws and protecting 30% of our land and waters. Achieving these goals requires a lot of money. So how does last night’s federal budget stack up?
Our collective expertise spans biodiversity conservation science and policy. In our view, the budget takes very small steps towards making good on the many government’s promises, but falls well short of what is needed.
Australia’s threatened species and ecosystems will not survive more funding neglect. It’s time to question our national priorities, and start funding the environment that sustains us.
A suite of big promises
First, let’s take a closer look at what the federal government said, ahead of the budget, it would achieve for Australia’s environment.
The government has promised to prevent any further species from becoming extinct. In the words of the government’s own report, “the challenges to the existence of the plants and animals that define Australia are bigger than ever”.
It will also strengthen national nature laws, otherwise known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. It follows a scathing independent review of the act in 2020.
As part of those reforms, the government pledged to establish a new national environmental watchdog to enforce the law and decide on project approvals and conditions.
And the Australian government has also promised to protect 30% of land and water by 2030, as well as restore 30% of degraded ecosystems, as part of a United Nations agreement it signed last year. This includes pledges to create ten new Indigenous Protected Areas and double the number of Indigenous Rangers.
So how far does the federal budget go to achieving the government’s ambitious conservation agenda?
The most promising budget announcement was A$121 million over four years to set up the new watchdog agency, to be known as Environment Protection Australia. A further $34 million will be spent on implementing national law reform and delivering a needed overhaul of conservation planning.
The new agency is sorely needed to address the national crisis of threatened species habitat loss in Australia. Research has found 93% of this destruction occurs without formal federal approval.
This is a good start, but the agency will need much greater funding, as well as independence, to function fearlessly as is intended. And it will only be effective if new environmental laws – currently being negotiated – give it the powers to prevent further biodiversity loss.
The budget also promises $51 million to create another new agency, Environment Information Australia. This body would provide high quality environmental data to support environmental regulation, planning and reporting.
This function is sorely needed to guide effective regulatory assessments and investments. There is also growing demand for biodiversity data for environmental accounting, business disclosures and the proposed Nature Repair Market.
However, the funding promised will only provide a basic data management and storage system. Far more is needed to fund the data collection necessary to fill the immense gaps in our biodiversity mapping and monitoring systems.
The new agency is sorely needed to address the national crisis of threatened species habitat loss in Australia. Shutterstock
What else for nature?
The budget allocates $262 million over four years to Commonwealth national parks and marine reserves. A significant portion will be spent maintaining and upgrading infrastructure.
Many of Australia’s existing protected areas are badly damaged by feral pests such as weeds, foxes and feral cats, as well as inappropriate fire regimes and more. The budget commitment is tepid relative to the scale of these challenges.
Our current Commonwealth reserve system is already under-managed and many species and ecosystems are being neglected. It’s crucial that expanding the reserve system does not exacerbate these existing problems.
The lack of funding for Commonwealth reserves means Indigenous Protected Areas must take on an even greater share of the burden when it comes to improving biodiversity. However, this will require a dramatic increase in resourcing.
The budget includes significant commitments to climate action, funding for the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, a review of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, and further investment to improve water quality flowing into the Great Barrier Reef. All of these should deliver some benefits for biodiversity.
The budget also contains $28 million to develop a much-needed national climate risk assessment, which includes risks to biodiversity. But a far greater investment will be needed to adapt to these risks.
And $439.2 million was committed over five years to support programs that repair World Heritage properties, restore Ramsar wetlands and conserve threatened species and habitats. This is a continuation of existing funding for natural resource management.
Feral animals such as foxes can damage ecosystems in protected areas. Shutterstock
Getting our priorities straight
Overall, the budget spending does not represent the substantial increase to existing funding needed to halt biodiversity declines or recover threatened species.
Research suggests Australia must spend $2 billion a year to save its 1,900 most imperilled species. And an additional $2 billion a year for 30 years could also restore 13 million hectares of Australia’s degraded land.
Meanwhile, the cost of adequately conserving our World Heritage areas and Ramsar wetlands is not yet known.
In light of this, the federal government’s budget investment is way off the mark.
The federal government could have scrapped the Stage 3 tax cuts, and redeployed the many billions of dollars a year to conserving species and ecosystems and properly funding Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger groups.
If it did that, Australia could recover all its threatened species by 2030 and have plenty left over for meeting national commitments to protecting and restoring degraded lands, and ensuring Indigenous people have more of a say over how Country is managed.
We endorse the government’s plans to strengthen Australia’s environment protection laws. But it must increase, by an order of magnitude, spending on threatened species and damaged ecosystems.
This is not a trade-off between the environment and the economy. Roughly half our GDP relies on natural systems. And nature has enormous benefits for the health and wellbeing of people and communities.
We must seriously examine our national priorities, and demand that Australian governments invest our national wealth in the species and ecosystems we depend on.
Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. She is a Lead Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF’s Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.
Brendan Wintle has received funding from The Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the NSW State Government, the Queensland State Government, the Commonwealth National Environmental Science Program, the Ian Potter Foundation, the Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. Wintle is a Board Director of Zoos Victoria and a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council.
Rachel Morgain receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation, the Hermon Slade Foundation, the Ross Trust, the Australian Government, the Victorian Government, the Nature Conservancy and the Australian Conservation Foundation. She works and consults with NRM Regions Australia.
Australian innovation has the capacity to protect us – our environment, our digital world, our borders and our health. All of these are focuses of this year’s federal budget.
But the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sector has been sounding the alarm for years that our research system is in crisis. Reviews in progress – including the Universities Accord, National Science and Research Priorities, and the Australian Research Council – are an opportunity to examine and respond to systemic problems.
However, they don’t take a whole-of-sector view to designing a research and innovation system that is not only functional but harmonious, and which makes the best use of Australian talent.
While we wait for these reviews to be complete, here’s where the 2023-24 budget stands in terms of Australia’s science, technology and innovation sectors in my assessment as the CEO of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE).
The nuclear submarine workforce will be bolstered by $128.5 million for 4,000 new places for tertiary STEM education. This is necessary to meet our commitments under AUKUS. We’ll never say no to more STEM degrees in this engineer-poor, rapidly innovating world.
This budget also aims to make safer online spaces with a welcome $7.9 million for combating misinformation and disinformation via the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and $101.6 million for cybersecurity.
But here, too, is a miss in the education and career pathways to train, support, and continue to develop Australia’s digital workforce. We’re already behind our OECD counterparts – Australia trains an insufficient number of engineers, with just 8.5% of Australian university graduates receiving engineering degrees compared with over 12% in Canada and over 23% in Germany. Our engineering and technology workforce is studded with gaps in areas such as civil engineering, telecommunications and mining, to name just a few.
The National Quantum Strategy, Australian Centre for Quantum Growth, and national artificial intelligence (AI) centre are a necessary trio to keep pace with this rapidly transforming field.
Small business is supported to commercialise research through the $392 million Industry Growth Program, adding to the already-committed Australia’s Economic Accelerator program. This will continue to build a positive commercialisation environment and lead to more of Australia’s world class research becoming world class innovations.
En route to a net zero superpower
In a decarbonising global economy, Australia has the potential to be a clean energy superpower. We are home to leading minds in most of the key technologies that will drive the clean energy revolution – next-generation batteries, computing power, machine learning and clean hydrogen to name a few. We have abundant critical minerals, sun and wind.
The new Net Zero Authority is an important step towards the urgent need to decarbonise and transform our domestic and export energy markets. But to achieve this bold transformation, government investment in research and development must match innovation-leading nations like Japan, Germany and the United States.
We need a coherent plan for clean energy research, development and deployment, with the backing to realise the vision. To keep the top tech and innovation minds here, we must invest around 3% of our gross domestic product (GDP) in research and development (R&D).
Direct government spend on R&D currently sits at 0.49% of GDP – its lowest level since 2014, leaving researchers competing for scraps. By contrast, visionary investment prioritises creating and applying new knowledge over the long term, and invests in building Australia’s new economy.
We need a structural review of R&D funding now to future-proof the system.
‘Clean’ hydrogen is among the renewables needed to transform Australia’s energy sector for a future with reduced carbon emissions. Shutterstock
What’s missing from the budget for STEM
Research funding grants have flatlined: inflation means their real value is falling. As we await Universities Accord outcomes, the government has avoided supporting the full cost of teaching STEM degrees. Nothing has been announced to address urgent STEM professional shortages, and to support STEM workforce diversity.
Likewise, there’s silence on much-needed industry bodies – a National Engineering Council and the National Indigenous STEM Professional Network.
International STEM collaboration is more important than ever, but has taken a hit with a $25 million reduction to the Global Science and Technology Diplomacy Fund. The fund was planned to support international collaboration in advanced manufacturing, AI and quantum computing, hydrogen production, and emerging applications of RNA vaccines and therapies to improve health outcomes.
In our region, and across the globe, collaborative and diplomatic relationships in STEM are essential.
We are yet to leverage Australia’s true capacity to grow a thriving R&D economy that supports our health, wealth, wellbeing and sustainability, and grows our stature as an innovative and future-focused, inclusive international leader.
Every budget has winners and losers. Next year, the reviews of our STEM sector will be complete, the government will have been in power for two years, and the window for game-changing investment will be shrinking.
My hope is that Australia’s long-term future as a safe and resilient nation will be the winner. We need a comprehensive and well funded plan to drive national progress and prosperity through research and development.
Kylie Walker’s organisation receives funding from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, and is CEO at the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trivess Moore, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University
Shutterstock
The quality and performance of our housing have big impacts on the environment, cost of living and our health and wellbeing. The 2023-24 federal budget’s announcement of $1.6 billion for energy-saving upgrades to housing recognises the broad importance of retrofitting Australian homes.
Until now, much of the focus in Australia has been on improving the quality and performance of new housing. Recent changes to the National Construction Code improve minimum standards for new housing for the first time in more than a decade.
But more than 10.8 million existing dwellings fall short of the quality and performance needed for a low-carbon and affordable future. We must urgently shift our attention to delivering a deep retrofit – including solar panels, double glazing and other insulation – of the homes 99% of us live in. This would not only be good for the environment and reduce living costs, it would also improve our health and wellbeing and help increase the reliability of the energy grid.
Most of our existing houses were built before minimum performance standards were adopted. Houses built before 1990 typically perform at a level of 1-3 stars on the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) (0 being worst, 10 best), compared to the 7 stars required of homes built after this October in most states.
Improving a house from 1 to 5 stars would reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling by about 70% in the Melbourne climate zone. And that means the household’s energy bills and emissions would be much lower too.
All this means the budget announcements are a welcome, but long-overdue, move to start a retrofit revolution in Australia.
What was announced?
The 2023-24 budget includes:
$3 billion in rebates that directly reduce energy bills for over 5 million households
$1.3 billion to set up the Household Energy Upgrades Fund, which will provide $1 billion to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to finance home energy upgrades for around 110,000 households
$300 million to co-fund 60,000 social housing retrofits with the states and territories
$36.7 million to expand and upgrade NatHERS to apply to existing homes, which will give households better information for decisions on energy upgrades and renting or buying homes
expand and modernise the Greenhouse Energy Minimum Standards (GEMS) to cover more products.
This funding will help make our existing housing more energy-efficient and cheaper to run.
It’s a start but much more is needed
Much of the budget is focused on providing short-term relief for vulnerable households facing rising energy bills. But the bigger, long-term challenge is to help existing housing become more sustainable, affordable and liveable.
The cash rebate on energy bills is a short-term fix. The money could be better spent on prevention rather than cure. Retrofitting goes to the heart of the problem – ageing, energy-guzzling homes – and is a responsible use of taxpayer money.
The benefits of retrofitting a house outlive the current residents. It should be seen as an investment in the national housing stock rather than a handout to individual households. A cash rebate to reduce energy bills does nothing to improve housing performance.
The expansion of NatHERS to better account for existing housing is a welcome incentive to upgrade these homes. We need to make sure, though, that the information provided is robust, reliable and accessible to all households. Households need practical information about the cost-efficient retrofit actions they can take.
In other parts of the world, such as the United Kingdom and Europe, information about a home’s performance must be disclosed at point of sale or lease. This helps households make informed decisions. It also provides better data to governments about the quality and performance of the housing stock.
The UK’s Energy Performance Certificate provides prospective buyers and renters with detailed information about a home’s energy rating, its energy costs and potential to be improved. Source: Energy Performance Certificate, GOV.UK, CC BY
In Australia we have very poor data about our existing housing. We are developing policy and support with one hand tied behind our back.
The scale of the retrofit challenge is huge
Another key issue is the scale and urgency of the retrofit task we face. The budget announcement will make only a small dent in the work to be done. If we assume the performance of most of our existing homes is below-par, that means we will need to deliver deep retrofit to more than 45 homes every hour between now and 2050.
Upgrading 110,000 private homes and 60,000 social housing units is better than nothing, but we clearly need to scale up this work well beyond these numbers. This will require much more ambition and coordination from all levels of government.
Low-tech solutions like sealing gaps offer great value for money and shouldn’t be overlooked. Shutterstock
We must also focus more on those who are most vulnerable, such as private renters on low incomes. Low-cost loans are good – if you qualify and have the means to repay them. What will those on the lowest incomes or without access to resources do?
We also need to make sure these loans don’t simply fund technology upgrades when there are cheaper and simpler things to do first, such as sealing gaps and cracks.
Scaling up is more than just a matter of providing support to households. We need to strengthen and develop retrofit capacity across the building industry to ensure demand can be met.
The industry needs certainty about the commitment of all levels of government to assist and sustain a low-carbon retrofit industry over time. This will allow the industry to plan and invest in capacity. This approach would help bolster the struggling construction industry while feeding into Australia’s wider net-zero ambitions.
Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.
Ralph Horne receives funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners.
It sounds like a lot. Kickstarting green hydrogen in Australia with A$2 billion to subsidise early production and making the energy-dense gas competitive. A goal of up to a gigawatt of electrolyser capacity within seven years.
Two years ago, the hydrogen announcement in Tuesday night’s federal budget might have been more significant. But since then, Russia’s war on Ukraine has driven ever-faster moves to shore up energy security by going green. France, for instance, will invest $14.6 billion in hydrogen. The United States is offering tax credits equivalent to over $4 per kilo of green hydrogen produced.
Since Labor took office, they’ve spruiked Australia as a renewable energy superpower. On solar and wind that’s true – we’re world leaders. But solar and wind are mature technologies. Green hydrogen is not. We’re still working out the best way to do it.
That means you can’t simply allocate $2 billion and expect an entirely new industry to be created. One reason is we don’t have the pipeline of expertise yet – green hydrogen engineers or experts in the electrolysers which crack water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. It will take time and investment to develop local capabilities.
Isn’t green hydrogen steaming ahead?
On paper, yes. There are now many projects across Australia, with different levels of progress and ambition. Iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest is betting heavily on green hydrogen with his Fortescue Future Industries company.
It could work – and work well. As coal and gas come out of our power production and cheap solar and wind rush in, we could use cheap daytime energy to crack water and produce hydrogen.
But it’s not guaranteed. It’s not like iron ore, where we have the advantage of large regions of red earth full of ore. There’s nothing special about hydrogen. You don’t have to dig it up. As long as you have access to the technology, the know-how and water, you can make it.
Across the US, Japan, Korea, China and the European Union, everyone is racing ahead. They see the long game – hydrogen will be useful, but only if it’s cheap and safe. That’s why they’re all heavily subsidising the industry.
Why are subsidies needed? Because the technology is still relatively new. Solar cells have been perfected over 40 years. While electrolysers – the key production technology – are well known, they’re currently too expensive. Storage, too, has to get better so we can safely use this flammable gas.
Labor’s $2 billion in subsidies is necessary. You can see the need clearly in the fact that, to date, these startup companies don’t have anyone to buy their product as yet. That’s one reason why South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas is in Germany at the moment, pitching his state’s product.
4 Reasons why there’s more to it than subsidies
Subsidies are important. Many industries in their infancy rely on them. In fact, Australia’s place as the top liquefied natural gas exporter came about from early subsidies. But they’re not enough by themselves.
What we need is a high-level strategy, hashing out how to actually make this happen.
Here are some key problems we have to solve to make green hydrogen a reality in Australia:
1. Get expertise out of academia. To date, almost all hydrogen experts work in universities. Like me, they may consult to industry. But there’s still a big gap to overcome to ensure the green hydrogen industry has in-house expertise to make their product a commercial reality.
2. Build an ecosystem. Let’s say you want to install a large electrolyser. Who is able to certify that it meets Australian standards? Who is able to test it works under Australian conditions? It’s not as simple as install this machine and churn out green hydrogen at $2 a kilogram. The whole ecosystem needs to be built.
3. Create a domestic market. If we don’t have domestic buyers, it’s hard to jump to export volumes.
4. Make sure it’s safe. Storing a flammable gas is something we’re still figuring out. One answer is to convert it to ammonia for shipping and back to hydrogen at the other end. But the work is still being done. A better answer may to be start accelerating the development of solid state hydrogen storage.
Yes. There’s a lot of scepticism about the need for green hydrogen. But in tackling climate change, we will need it. Fuel cell cars, buses and trucks don’t have to rely on batteries which slowly degrade over time.
Green hydrogen will also be needed to decarbonise industries such as steelmaking.
And we will probably need green hydrogen as a way to store energy long term. Once it’s stored, you can keep it indefinitely and use it when you need it. It could be a good complement to solar, wind and storage. Plus, green hydrogen can produce heat for industrial processes.
Like it or not, Australia is in a race to secure part of this new market. We export gas and coal, but their time is ending. Think of how Taiwan went early to secure a lead in making the silicon chips on which so much of the world’s economy relies.
If we want to be competitive, we have to act decisively and fast. Yes, the budget announcement is a step forward. But a step doesn’t win a race.
Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou is director of H2potential an hydrogen advisory firm. He receives funding supporting his research from Government grant schemes including the ARC. He is affiliated with the University of Sydney as a Professor where he develops hydrogen technologies.
The 2023-24 federal budget takes a step in the right direction for aged care, with a much-needed pay boost for workers in the sector.
But there are major medium- to long-term challenges to overcome from cost increases. Despite a royal commission, major commitments from a new government and significant additional funding, around two-thirds of residential aged providers and one-quarter of home care providers are losing money.
If we’re going to have a functioning aged-care system in a decade or two that meets the needs of the ageing population, we need to consider bold reform to make it fit for purpose.
What’s the problem?
Around 60% of government aged care funding is spent on residential care. Impersonal, large scale, “big box” aged-care institutions still dominate the system.
But older people in residential care are still getting less than the mandated three hours and 20 minutes of care per day. Only around $12 a day is spent on food. The commitment to have a registered nurse in all residential-care facilities won’t be met in the time period promised.
Not surprisingly, most people want care at home instead. There has been a massive increase in the number of home care packages in response. This part of the aged-care industry has proven much more profitable.
Even so, home care packages for more older people with more complex needs remain cumbersome and inefficient. Administrative costs are high, funding is too low for people with very complex needs and there are risks with the rapid introduction of new providers and the “uberisation” of services through new online platforms.
A new government Support at Home program is due to reform and replace the existing home care packages, home support program, respite care and short-term restorative care program. But it has again been delayed – now until 2025. There are ongoing concerns about the design and implementation of the program.
A major underlying problem for aged care is that workers are undervalued. Pay is not competitive with the disability and health-care sector and providers struggle to get staff. Career structures, supervision and training are all underdone.
Home support changes have been delayed. Shutterstock
What’s in the budget for aged care?
The Fair Work Commission determined that wages for direct care workers should be increased by 15%. The budget includes $12.4 billion for aged care, mainly to fund pay increases for 250,000 aged-care workers in residential and home care.
Daily payment rates for aged-care residents will increase by 17.6% to cover pay increases and inflation and an additional 9,500 home care packages will be introduced over the next year.
This year’s federal budget is a step in the right direction, particularly in improving pay rates for aged-care workers. But the medium to longer term future for aged care remains bleak without significant further reform.
Estimates suggest Australia will need to increase aged-care spending by $10 billion a year to implement the aged care royal commissions recommendations.
It would need to double to around 3% of GDP to be in line with high-quality aged care in comparable OECD countries.
Current funding is a complicated and unsustainable mix of Commonwealth government payments, means-tested user contributions and capital contributions for residential care.
Commonwealth payments are generated from general revenue. Effectively this is a pay-as-you-go model where today’s taxpayers meet the costs. Inevitably that means growth in spending is an ongoing political balancing act in the hurly burly of the annual budget process. There is no guarantee growth funding will be provided in the medium to longer term.
What are the alternatives?
There are alternatives, but none of them are likely in Australia.
A social insurance model like the transport accident, workers’ compensation and superannuation schemes could be introduced to fund aged care, at least in part. That would mean workers (and potentially their employers) would contribute to their potential future aged-care costs during their working lives. Social insurance models exist in Germany, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands.
In Australia, there have been calls for a superannuation levy on contributions to fund future aged-care costs. But this would fly in the face of the federal government’s intention to make it clear that the purpose of superannuation is to provide a decent retirement income rather than using it as a piggy bank to fund health and aged care.
One idea is for workers to contribute to their own aged care fund. Shutterstock
An other alternative is wealth taxes to pay for aged care. The current capital contribution schemes for residential care (Refundable Accommodation Deposit and Daily Accommodation Payment schemes) are an inefficient, inequitable and half baked model. More equitable, targeted universal estate taxes could be introduced to fund aged care, but that would raise the politically uncomfortable spectre of death duties.
The most palatable option to provide future growth funding for aged care would be the introduction of an aged-care levy as part of the general tax mix. A 1% levy, similar to the Medicare levy, would raise around $8 billion a year.
While Treasury generally opposes hypothecated levies, levy revenue already partially funds health and disability care. It would be reasonably easy to introduce (and popular with the community) for aged care.
Hal Swerissen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
France has been warned against attempts to abandon the New Caledonian decolonisation process pursued for more than two decades.
A veteran independence campaigner, Victor Tutugoro, made the warning on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Noumea Accord, which has been the roadmap guiding the gradual and irreversible transfer of power from France to New Caledonia.
As one of the signatories, Tutugoro told the news site Outremers360 that “the process of decolonisation must continue. It was thought to bring back calm and serenity, it should not be thrown away today”.
“Rewriting a blank page, wiping everything off the table is dangerous, it’s leading the country to disaster,” he said.
After the violence in the 1980s, the accord between the pro- and anti-independence parties as well as the French state firmed up the consensus for a peaceful approach to the Kanaks’ claim for self-determination.
The proposed 20-year emancipation process of the accord concluded with three referendums between 2018 and 2021 and resulted in three rejections of full sovereignty — two of them very narrowly.
Not legitimate However, the third and last vote in 2021 is not being accepted by the Kanaks as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process.
With the Kanak population being hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic, the pro-independence parties lobbied France to postpone the plebiscite but Paris refused, which prompted a boycott of the vote.
More than 96 percent voted against independence but less than half of the electorate voted.
Few Kanaks voted and as the president of New Caledonia’s Congress and signatory to the Noumea Accord, Roch Wamtyan, noted, the vote missed the point because it should have been about the Kanak people, colonised since 1853.
“It’s a travesty. It’s not a referendum that concerns the Kanak people,” he said.
The anti-independence parties hailed the referendum victory and French President Emmanuel Macron also welcomed the result, saying “France was more beautiful because New Caledonia decided to remain part of it”.
Macron said a new common project had to be built while recognising and respecting the dignity of everyone.
The accord stipulates that in the case of three “no” votes, the political partners would meet to examine the situation which had arisen.
Murky way forward The way forward is murky as the two sides hold incompatible positions.
There is disagreement over whether the process has come to its conclusion and there is disagreement over whether the Noumea Accord provisions now enshrined in the French constitution are irreversible.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the result of the referendum in 2021. Image: RNZ Pacific/AFP
As Noumea law professor Mathias Chauchat noted last year, “there is a contradiction between the lapsing and irreversibility of the Noumea Accord. The two concepts cannot be made to coexist”.
“Either the accord is void or it is irreversible,” he added.
Tutugoro said the accord provisions must continue to be implemented.
He said the rebalancing within the territory as outlined in the accord was not complete, citing the Northern Province where he said one cannot do in 30 years what had not been done in more than 100 years.
“It should be the Kanaks, and those to whom we have given the right to decolonisation [other New Caledonian communities] to run the country today. But we are still far from it. Many decisions are made in ministerial circles or in inaccessible settings,” he said.
He went on to say that it was a mistake “to have trusted certain signatories. The accord is what it is today because some did not keep to their word. And here, the word is sacred,” he said.
Will Paris alter the provincial roll? A contentious issue emanating from the Noumea Accord is the make-up of the roll used in provincial elections, which choose the provincial assemblies that in turn make up the Congress.
At the insistence of the pro-independence parties, it was agreed that in order to be eligible to vote, an individual must be either an indigenous Kanak or a resident since 1998.
This provision was meant to set the parameters for New Caledonian citizenship.
The anti-independence parties said given the referendum outcome, New Caledonia needed to be realigned with France and the restrictions eased.
They said the restricted roll had become untenable and want France to open it for next year’s elections.
About 40,000 French citizens are excluded from provincial elections but can take part in France’s parliamentary and presidential elections.
A leading anti-independence politician and president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said she would quit her position in the French government if it failed to open up New Caledonia’s electoral rolls.
Anti-independence politician Sonia Backes . . . threatened to quit her position in the French government if it failed to open up New Caledonia’s electoral rolls. Image: RNZ Pacific
Citizens have same rights An organisation of French citizens without full voting rights in New Caledonia pointed out a basic principle of the French republic was that all citizens had the same rights.
Cognisant of the possible implications of the Noumea Accord, the French government noted that “a lasting registration of a restricted and fixed electorate would raise difficulties with regard to France’s international commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and under the European Convention on Human Rights”.
Two months ago, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the 2024 provincial elections would not be able to go ahead with the 1998.
However, he has yet to announce what change his government plans and how it would be implemented.
The pro-independence parties, united under the FLNKS umbrella, keep objecting to any suggestion for change.
Its delegate at the UN Decolonisation Committee, Dimitri Qenegei, said last year that France’s intention to open up the electoral rolls was the ultimate weapon to “drown” the Kanak people and “recolonise” New Caledonia.
The Kanaks, he said, would be made to disappear and that would not be accepted, inevitably lead to conflict.
‘Mother of all battles’ The Caledonian Union’s Gilbert Tyuienon told New Caledonia’s La Premiere television at the weekend that getting the restricted roll was “the mother of all battles” for the Kanaks in the process of attaining the 1998 Noumea Accord.
Last month, the union’s president, Daniel Goa, warned that if France changed the roll for provincial elections, there would be a risk of there never being any election.
He added that the survival of the Kanaks hinged on the issue.
In response, the anti-independence coalition, led by Backes, lodged a complaint with the French prosecutor for alleged incitement to violence and sedition.
In defending Goa, Tyuienon said he simply stated what the party membership thought.
He warned that dialogue [with France] would be suspended if Goa was taken to court.
Since the disputed 2021 referendum, the Caledonian Union keeps insisting that any discussion has to be a bilateral one between the coloniser and the colonised people.
Sovereignty timetable It insists on a timetable to be presented for the restoration of sovereignty taken in 1853.
Only then, it said, would it be prepared to enter into trilateral talks which included the anti-independence parties.
In the week after the 2021 referendum, Paris presented a timetable for the post-referendum process which was meant to culminate in a new referendum on a new statute for the territory in June this year.
The pro-independence parties, however, deprived the French plan of its momentum.
Only last month saw the pro-independence parties accept top level contact with the French government for the first time since the 2021 vote.
There was no tangible progress towards any new statute but agreement to continue talks in June when the French interior minister Darmanin is due back in Noumea for a second time in three months.
The provincial elections are scheduled for May next year, but it is uncertain what the roll will look like.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
From Island girl to an airline pilot seems like the Disney fantasy Moana yet nothing could further from the truth when it comes to Silva McLeod who turned fantasy into reality with heartbreak along the way.
Born in the small Tongan village of Vava’u in the days when we watched and marvelled as jets few overhead, Mcleod never dreamed one day that she would be there in the sky flying jet planes to all manner of destinations.
The book details when and where she meets her Australian husband Ken who went to Tonga to work in building a hospital. She was working as a waitress in a bar when she first met him.
However, unlike other Palagi (white men) visiting the islands and making promises they never intended to keep, Ken — according to her autobiography that initially reads like a Mills & Boon novel — was a perfect gentleman as he slowly courted her.
“At first, it wasn’t the done thing to do… Unfortunately, the picture we have that white men come in — it’s not a very nice picture, but that’s how it was — they impregnate the Tongan girl and then nick off, and mum and dad, nan and pa will have to clean up the mess,” she writes.
“So, this is quite rare, a young handsome Pālagi came to our island, and we found a common attraction to each other. My family feared the worst … so it wasn’t very well received in the beginning.
Language ‘huge barrier’ “Language was a huge barrier at the beginning, because my family couldn’t speak a word of English and Ken couldn’t speak a word of Tongan.
“So how could Ken make a conversation that might help my family accept the situation? But it didn’t take long.”
Ken eventually whisked her away to Melbourne in 1980, and while her dreams were put on the backburner while the couple raised a family.
She did ultimately realise her dream to become Tonga and possibly the Pacific female airline pilot, beginning as a flying instructor, then flying for Royal Tonga Airlines, Australian Flying Doctor Service and eventually Virgin International Airlines.
And, at the time of doing this interview, she was waiting to hear about her health results to find out whether she could keep flying.
Becoming a pilot “was never really a dream, because I could never envision reaching it or getting there,” Mcleod says.
“It was more like a fantasy because it was never going to happen.
Both ways to the beach “Growing up in Vava’u, in a tiny little island of Pangaimotu, 200 people live there: you walk one way you reach the beach; you turn around 180 degrees you reach the beach.
“So, to dream of eventually becoming an airline pilot one day, or even just flying an aeroplane was unreachable — so I kept it as a fantasy.
“I can just visualise myself as a child running outside every time I hear a sound of an aircraft and I was there [looking] at the sky until the aircraft disappeared.
“The curiosity in me … was getting a little bit too much, running away with the thought of ‘oh wow, how clever is that, imagine the people that are flying that machine… wouldn’t it be amazing to operate such a machine, because it defies gravity?
“The fantasy was right from a young age, but it wasn’t a dream because I didn’t think that I’d get there.”
Mcleod’s world while growing up was limited, she says: “like wanting to reach for a piece of coconut but finding your arms are bound”.
At the time growing up in the 1970s in Vava’u, television and newspapers weren’t easily accessible, so glimpses of the lives and places outside of the immediate community were limited, she says.
‘I can’t get out’ “It felt like, ‘I can’t get out’. It’s the same right across the Pacific Islands, it’s not just Tonga.
“We have such a rich culture and living in it … it’s just part of you and something I will treasure and value for the rest of my life.
“But then on the other hand, it’s restrictive because there’s nothing else to do.
“You go to school and then after that there was no university, there was no job. What could you do on an island? You couldn’t see a future.
“We are bound by culture, we bind by family, we bind by religion. It’s like you are free but you are bound to something.
“That’s just the way it is, and that’s just the island life, and you just grow up understanding it and it’s part of you.”
Now, with internet connectivity many Pasifika children view a more open world, she says.
Done her family duty Settling in Melbourne and raising two daughters who are happily married with their own kids, she has done her family duty.
Then in a conversation with Ken, Mcleod spoke of her dream of becoming a pilot. However, instead of laughing, her husband told her that she could do it.
“Yes you have to be good at mathematics to be pilot and it takes hard work so no fantasy is ever easy,” she said.
Not long after, Ken became sick with cancer, and underwent chemotherapy. Mcleod focused on his recovery until her husband asked her about what it would take to get her started. He bought her a birthday present of vouchers for an introductory flight, and the rest is history.
Six years later, she earned her air transport pilot’s licence and became the first Tongan woman to qualify as a pilot, and later a flight instructor.
The work brought Mcleod satisfaction, though she frequently faced both racism and sexism along the way, such as callers would say they wanted to speak to “Mr McLeod”.
Sexism, racism and misogynism, she has experienced it all, but as she said, “my book isn’t about that, I just wanted to tell my story through my eyes”.
An eye on Boeing 777s As a pilot, Mcleod was “quite happy just flying 737s all around” but followed with interest as Boeing 777s were developed and introduced, with automated fly-by-wire technology.
“I was based in New Zealand for nearly 12 months — loved my time there. That was on the 737s, so I did all of the domestic routes in New Zealand as well as all the South Pacific islands.
“At first I was based in Christchurch, then when moved Auckland a group of us pilots pooled our allowance and took an apartment at Auckland’s viaduct and we just loved it there, Ken came along and joined us,” she said.
Mcleod then began working for the Virgin stable and was trained to pilot 777s there — another thing ticked off her bucket list.
When she joined Royal Tongan Airlines and became the first pilot to speak fluent Tongan to the largely Tongan passengers over the intercom, it gave her such pride.
Defining her life Mcleod underlines her story that flying aeroplanes does not define her life. Her journey, family, cultural identity and partnership with Ken determined her life.
Alas Ken died recently from cancer as the covid-19 pandemic swept through the world, and McLeod says that until the end they remained both close and committed to breaking down barriers of skin colour and culture.
“I was a wife first, a mother, a grandmother, a carer, and I just call myself a worker … whatever field you have it’s no different. I just wanted to tell my story,” she says.
“And if my story inspires young Pacific women to be who they want to, then so be it, but that was not my ambition, I just wanted to tell my story,” she says heading out the door to a nearby golf course.
The day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States in 2017, women took to the streets in protest. In varying states of fury and disbelief, millions of women and their supporters participated in the first Women’s March. The seas of pink hats in streets across America, and the world, attempted to reclaim power and agency from a man who, the day before, had become one of the most powerful men in the world – and who had bragged, openly and unashamedly, about assaulting women.
To date, 26 women have accused the former and once again aspiring president of abuse. Overnight, for the very first time, five years after that first protest, Trump has been held accountable to one of them.
Jean E. Carroll first made her accusations against the president public in her 2019 memoir. Carroll described meeting Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan the mid-1990s, where Trump had attacked and, she alleged, raped her in a dressing room.
The president accused her of fabricating the story in order to promote her book, and in response, she sued for defamation. Carroll sued him again in late 2022, this time over posts Trump had made on social media. This time, she won.
In New York – also the site of Trump’s recent indictment in a separate criminal case – a jury unanimously agreed that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and battery, and that he had also defamed Carroll. Importantly, the jury stopped short of finding Trump had raped her. Nevertheless, it did recommend she be awarded US$5 million (A$7.4 million) in damages – $2 million for the abuse, and $3 million for defamation.
Predictably, Trump has responded with all-caps fury on his struggling social media platform, Truth Social. The former president claims this verdict is yet another part of a wide-ranging conspiracy against him, and that he will, of course, fight it.
There’s no doubt he will, or that he will almost certainly use his tried-and-true tactics of delaying cases and threatening countersuits. Because it is Trump, this case will no doubt be folded in under the tent of the circus we have become so inured to since he first rode down the golden escalator in 2015.
Even then, as he announced his campaign for the presidency nearly a decade ago, Trump cavalierly spoke about sexual abuse, making the racist and false claim that Mexico was sending drugs, criminals and rapists to the United States. The incredulity that greeted that claim, and later, the recording of Trump saying that he could “grab ‘em by the pussy” whenever he wanted, still lingers. How could such a man be elected president of the most powerful country in the world? Today, the question isn’t all that different – could he do it again?
It is certainly possible that the second time around, the accusations of abuse and criminal misconduct – and now the finding of a jury in New York that Trump is liable for at least some of it – will hurt him politically. There is a creeping sense that the multitude of criminal and civil cases the former president is facing, and has managed to hold off for most of his life, are finally closing in; that a pincer movement of state, federal and civil suits might finally signal the end of his political career.
Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves court after winning her civil case against Donald Trump on sexual abuse and defamation. John Minchillo/AP/AAP
But, as always with Trump, there is much more at stake than his individual political fate. In 2017, millions of women took to the streets to protest the new president. They were also reacting to something much bigger – to an ongoing misogynist and racist assault on women’s rights and autonomy that, in the years since, Trump and the political movement that supports him have deliberately enabled.
In fact, much of the support that swept Trump into power in the first place was predicated on his promise to give conservatives the Supreme Court, as part of a generational project to undermine and overturn Roe v Wade – the 1970s court decision that protected women’s rights to abortion.
Many of the women and their supporters marching in 2017 knew that Trump’s gleeful boasting about abusing women and the broader, longstanding efforts to undermine women’s rights and autonomy, were two sides of the same coin.
Trump’s ability to get elected even in the face of 26 accusations of sexual assault were enabled by the structural conditions of American politics and culture. Those same structural conditions allowed the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of overwhelming democratic opposition, and continue to allow states to pass draconian and oppressive laws preventing women and minorities access to health care.
E. Jean Carroll’s victory over Trump is a significant one. But it is only one part of a much bigger fight against the racism and misogyny of American politics – a fight that is about, and has always been about, much more than just one obscene old man.
Emma Shortis is a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristopher Nielsen, Adjunct Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Getty Images
Something is not working in our approach to mental health in Aotearoa New Zealand. According to Statistics New Zealand, more than a quarter of the population can be described as having poor mental wellbeing, and this proportion is increasing.
Problems are particularly prevalent in young people, with 23.6% of those aged 15-24 years reporting high or very high levels of psychological distress, according to the 2021/22 New Zealand Health Survey – up from only 5.1% in the 2011/12 report.
There are many likely (and familiar) contributing factors, including COVID-19 and the associated social disruption, stress due to the rising cost of living, and inequity and marginalisation on the basis of identity.
Other plausible factors include existential concern over the climate crisis, overburdened and underpaid teachers, social media and the crumbing mental health system.
But there is a less obvious factor that may conceivably be contributing to the mental health crisis, particularly in young people: the paradoxical effects of heightened mental health awareness.
Defining the problem
Young people are more aware than ever of mental illness, largely due to explicit efforts in recent decades to raise awareness about mental health and mental disorders, including through the reach of social media.
But some recent research has questioned whether this increased awareness is as beneficial as it may first seem. While greater awareness can mean “more accurate reporting of previously under-recognised symptoms”, it may also cause “some individuals to interpret and report milder forms of distress as mental health problems”.
People may then seek professional help, as they have been advised to do, but find such help is often unavailable. This in turn can lead to a very real increase in distress. And it may discourage more traditional and less clinical forms of coping such as talking with friends and family or making positive lifestyle changes.
It is also plausible that greater awareness and acceptance of mental health difficulties may lead people to see those issues as an inevitable part of who they are – as simply part of their brain chemistry.
Such a view could result in the loss of a sense of personal agency over psychological challenges, creating a sense of hopelessness about the possibility of positive change.
Mental health and identity
None of this is entirely surprising. The notion of “concept creep” has been used to describe “the gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts such as bullying, mental disorder, prejudice, and trauma”.
Consider how terms such as “trauma” and “bullying” have grown in usage but become less specific in meaning as topics of public conversation. Anecdotally, this is what we seem to be seeing with public understanding of mental disorder – including the assumption that mental health problems are simply part of someone’s identity.
None of this suggests we should stop talking about such an important topic. Rather, we need to think very critically about how we talk about mental health and mental disorder – shifting from thinking in terms of mental health awareness to mental health literacy.
This means discussing what does count as a mental health problem – and also what doesn’t. For example, some people clearly experience genuinely problematic levels of anxiety. But, at the same time, anxiety is a normal and healthy human emotion. Where exactly do we draw the line?
The book proposes a new way of approaching this complex but vital topic. It acknowledges mental disorders are influenced by factors across the brain, body and environment. However, it also preserves a sense of agency and hope – seeing mental health problems as things we can have influence over.
The question of how we should best think about mental disorder is more than simply an academic or philosophical quandary. It has very real implications for health policy, for what our systems of care should look like and for how individuals understand the mental health challenges they or their loved ones may face.
Ultimately, how we think about mental disorder matters a great deal.
Kristopher Nielsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sits down with the Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese in San Diego. Picture by Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has delivered his second budget with a heavy focus on cost-of-living relief for Australians who are struggling due to persistently high inflation and rising interest rates.
While Chalmers says the economy should continue to create jobs and unemployment is expected to remain historically low, inflation remains the top economic concern.
Chalmers says the budget is aimed at providing relief to Australians while trying to prevent adding to inflationary pressures (though some economists have expressed doubts that this will be possible).
The clear highlight of this budget is the government’s $14.6 billion cost-of-living relief spending plan, which includes some of the major measures listed below.
The government is also forecasting a “small surplus” of $4.2 billion in this financial year, the first time it’s been in the black in 15 years. However, this is expected to be followed by a deficit of $13.9 billion in 2023-24 – and forecasted deficits over the following three years.
Here are five charts to show how the current budget fits in with historic economic trends and other economic indicators. Following that is a breakdown of notable spends and cuts in the budget across specific portfolios.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne
There were four major changes for health care in the 2023-24 budget: prioritising primary care, funding to strengthen Medicare, cheaper access to common medicines, and new funding to keep the digital health system going. Many of these changes were foreshadowed in recent weeks.
The big news on budget night was a tripling of the bulk-billing incentive, a key plank to strengthen Medicare.
This payment was introduced in 2004 to encourage GPs to bulk bill pensioners, health care card holders and children. It provides an additional amount, of around A$7 to over $10 depending on GP location, on top of the ordinary Medicare rebate when the service is bulk billed.
But bulk billing has since declined, from about 90% of attendances in early 2022 to about 80% a year later. Bulk billing is unevenly distributed and in some low-income areas (bulk-billing deserts) fewer than 50% of people have all their GP attendances bulk billed. This causes uncertainty and people missing out on care.
A tripling of the bulk-billing incentive – described as the biggest investment in Medicare in 40 years – is hoped to stem, and possibly reverse, the decline.
However it’s unclear whether it will increase bulk billing. Practice owners could simply pocket the increased incentive for patients who are already bulk billed, leaving bulk billing rates unchanged. Or GPs could use the increased revenue from their existing bulk-billed patients to reduce their hours of work, rather than bulk billing more patients.
1. Primary care is now a priority
The most important change in the budget for health was symbolic: the government talked about primary care. Typically, health budgets are focused on hospitals, with primary care an afterthought, or worse: the target of budget cuts.
The 2023 budget starts the process of the primary care rebuild, modernising the system in response to the transition to a population with more people with multiple chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and depression.
In the lead up to the budget, Health Minister Butler emphasised the centrality of primary care to the health system. In addition to the rhetoric, this budget allocates real money to create a new foundation for primary care.
2. Funding the plan to strength Medicare
The second change is to fund what has been long discussed. Health Minister Butler signalled the focus on primary care as one of his first acts when he appointed the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce, which I was a member of.
The taskforce report, released late last year, sets out an ambitious blueprint for change. This budget includes the first down payment, of more than $1 billion new money in a full year.
A key challenge for primary care policy is the reliance on fee-for-service payments. The budget addresses this by modernising the way the government pays for primary care in two critical ways:
Patient enrolment
First, it introduces the concept of enrolment into the Australian primary care world.
Long part of primary care systems internationally, and regarded as one of the key “building blocks” for good primary care, enrolment involves a patient identifying a preferred GP as their main source of care.
Patient enrolment, dubbed MyMedicare, will mean the practice or GP has responsibility for the patient between visits, and therefore introduces a long-term relationship between patient and practitioner.
Team-based health care
The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce also recommended more multi-disciplinary or team-based primary care, involving nurses, physiotherapists and a range of other health providers and administrative supports. This is a somewhat back-to-the-future initiative as the 21st-century iteration of the Whitman government’s community health program.
The budget provides a significant increase in the workforce incentive program, which provides grants to practices to employ nurses, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers and allied health professionals.
The program recognises that care for people with multiple chronic conditions requires the skills of a range of professions. Importantly, many general practices have already recognised this and are already providing team-based care.
The increased funding in this budget will reward that past behaviour, making these practices more viable, as well as encouraging an expansion in other practices.
The changes emphasise team-based care, using the skills of a range of health providers. Shutterstock
3. Extended prescription dispensing length
The third budget change, announced in April, reduces prescription costs for medications by extending prescription quantities to two rather than one month’s supply for many common medications.
It doubles the amount of medication that may be dispensed under a single prescription, reducing patient co-payments and dispensing fees paid to pharmacists. It reduces government outlays by about $400 million a year and shows the government is prepared to take on a powerful stakeholder, despite the guild’s threats, big political donations and local campaigns.
4. Digital health time bomb
Finally, the budget addresses a time bomb left by the previous government: digital health.
The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce identified contemporary digital health capacity as essential for a modern health system. Yet peculiarly, the previous government did not provide funding for the Digital Health Agency and My Health Record on an ongoing basis. It was due to expire on June 30 2023.
Although the current functionality and support for My Health Record leaves much to be desired, closing it down without replacement was never an option.
What’s missing?
The obvious omission relates to mental health. Although funding has been provided for more budget time bombs – programs which otherwise would have ended – and funding for additional places in psychology courses, mental health reform is still a work in progress.
The discontinuation of the COVID-related temporary extension of the Better Access program from a limit of ten to a limit of 20 mental health visits prompted predictable criticism, even though the program was demonstrably inequitable. The government has recognised this gap, titling its mental health budget announcement “laying the groundwork”.
Overall, the health component of the 2023-2024 budget is well crafted. It signals a new priority for primary care and provides a new foundation for funding reform for the future.
Stephen Duckett is Chair of the Board of Directors of Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network and was a member of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne
There were four major changes for health care in the 2023-24 budget: prioritising primary care, funding to strengthen Medicare, cheaper access to common medicines, and new funding to keep the digital health system going. Many of these changes were foreshadowed in recent weeks.
The big news on budget night was a tripling of the bulk-billing incentive, a key plank to strengthen Medicare.
This payment was introduced in 2004 to encourage GPs to bulk bill pensioners, health care card holders and children. It provides an additional amount, of around A$7 to over $10 depending on GP location, on top of the ordinary Medicare rebate when the service is bulk billed.
But bulk billing has since declined, from about 90% of attendances in early 2022 to about 80% a year later. Bulk billing is unevenly distributed and in some low-income areas (bulk-billing deserts) fewer than 50% of people have all their GP attendances bulk billed. This causes uncertainty and people missing out on care.
A tripling of the bulk-billing incentive – described as the biggest investment in Medicare in 40 years – is hoped to stem, and possibly reverse, the decline.
However it’s unclear whether it will increase bulk billing. Practice owners could simply pocket the increased incentive for patients who are already bulk billed, leaving bulk billing rates unchanged. Or GPs could use the increased revenue from their existing bulk-billed patients to reduce their hours of work, rather than bulk billing more patients.
1. Primary care is now a priority
The most important change in the budget for health was symbolic: the government talked about primary care. Typically, health budgets are focused on hospitals, with primary care an afterthought, or worse: the target of budget cuts.
The 2023 budget starts the process of the primary care rebuild, modernising the system in response to the transition to a population with more people with multiple chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and depression.
In the lead up to the budget, Health Minister Butler emphasised the centrality of primary care to the health system. In addition to the rhetoric, this budget allocates real money to create a new foundation for primary care.
2. Funding the plan to strength Medicare
The second change is to fund what has been long discussed. Health Minister Butler signalled the focus on primary care as one of his first acts when he appointed the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce, which I was a member of.
The taskforce report, released late last year, sets out an ambitious blueprint for change. This budget includes the first down payment, of more than $1 billion new money in a full year.
A key challenge for primary care policy is the reliance on fee-for-service payments. The budget addresses this by modernising the way the government pays for primary care in two critical ways:
Patient enrolment
First, it introduces the concept of enrolment into the Australian primary care world.
Long part of primary care systems internationally, and regarded as one of the key “building blocks” for good primary care, enrolment involves a patient identifying a preferred GP as their main source of care.
Patient enrolment, dubbed MyMedicare, will mean the practice or GP has responsibility for the patient between visits, and therefore introduces a long-term relationship between patient and practitioner.
Team-based health care
The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce also recommended more multi-disciplinary or team-based primary care, involving nurses, physiotherapists and a range of other health providers and administrative supports. This is a somewhat back-to-the-future initiative as the 21st-century iteration of the Whitman government’s community health program.
The budget provides a significant increase in the workforce incentive program, which provides grants to practices to employ nurses, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers and allied health professionals.
The program recognises that care for people with multiple chronic conditions requires the skills of a range of professions. Importantly, many general practices have already recognised this and are already providing team-based care.
The increased funding in this budget will reward that past behaviour, making these practices more viable, as well as encouraging an expansion in other practices.
The changes emphasise team-based care, using the skills of a range of health providers. Shutterstock
3. Extended prescription dispensing length
The third budget change, announced in April, reduces prescription costs for medications by extending prescription quantities to two rather than one month’s supply for many common medications.
It doubles the amount of medication that may be dispensed under a single prescription, reducing patient co-payments and dispensing fees paid to pharmacists. It reduces government outlays by about $400 million a year and shows the government is prepared to take on a powerful stakeholder, despite the guild’s threats, big political donations and local campaigns.
4. Digital health time bomb
Finally, the budget addresses a time bomb left by the previous government: digital health.
The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce identified contemporary digital health capacity as essential for a modern health system. Yet peculiarly, the previous government did not provide funding for the Digital Health Agency and My Health Record on an ongoing basis. It was due to expire on June 30 2023.
Although the current functionality and support for My Health Record leaves much to be desired, closing it down without replacement was never an option.
What’s missing?
The obvious omission relates to mental health. Although funding has been provided for more budget time bombs – programs which otherwise would have ended – and funding for additional places in psychology courses, mental health reform is still a work in progress.
The discontinuation of the COVID-related temporary extension of the Better Access program from a limit of ten to a limit of 20 mental health visits prompted predictable criticism, even though the program was demonstrably inequitable. The government has recognised this gap, titling its mental health budget announcement “laying the groundwork”.
Overall, the health component of the 2023-2024 budget is well crafted. It signals a new priority for primary care and provides a new foundation for funding reform for the future.
Stephen Duckett is Chair of the Board of Directors of Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network and was a member of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce
The Green Party should be very high in the opinion polls right now. Historically, when Labour is low in the polls the Greens tend to be the recipients of progressive voters looking for an alternative. A huge proportion of the 50 per cent vote Labour got in 2020 are now disillusioned with the Labour Government and casting around for another party to place their trust in at the election.
The current policy environment is also highly favourable to the Greens. Voters say that they are especially concerned with issues which the Greens have the ability to campaign strongly on: climate change, housing, inequality, tax reform, and the cost of living.
2023 should therefore be The Year of the Greens. Yet it’s not. Instead, the Greens are struggling in the polls – averaging only about nine percent, well below where they’ve polled in the past. And instead of ploughing ahead, making great strides in government with their ministerial portfolios of climate change and homelessness, they are infighting – mostly over culture war and personality issues.
Environmental dirty politics and internecine war
The internal conflict in the Greens has been building in recent years, and reached a whole new level, first with the temporarily successful plot last year to steal the co-leadership off James Shaw, and then on Friday with the departure from the party of Shaw’s nemesis MP Elizabeth Kerekere.
The plot against Shaw was mainly driven by the Green Left Network, which is essentially the social justice (or “woke”) faction of the party. This is the part of the caucus and activist base that want the party to focus on progressing decolonisation, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and rainbow issues.
Activists within the Green Left Network, together with the Rainbow Greens, were keen to undermine and replace Shaw, seeing him as too conservative and the wrong demographic. And this year they’ve managed to force him to step aside from his long-held candidacy in the Wellington Central electorate, in favour of city councillor Tamatha Paul.
In this faction fight, MP Elizabeth Kerekere has been strongly associated with the social justice grouping – along with other Green MPs like Teanau Tuiono, Ricardo Menéndez March, and Golriz Ghahraman. Meanwhile, Shaw represents the environmental faction of the Greens. They have had less time for the social justice agendas of Kerekere’s faction, and long suspected that Kerekere herself has been working against Shaw. It was therefore unsurprising that Shaw and his supporters have pushed back strongly against Kerekere.
Of course, Kerekere handed them the weapons to use against her when she mistakenly sent her “crybaby” messages about Chloe Swarbrick to the rest of the Green MPs on 5 April. Shaw’s environmental faction appears to have leaked the damning messages to the media to settle the score and reduce Kerekere’s influence.
The leadership were also able to use Kerekere’s crybaby messages to initiate an internal inquiry against the rebel MP, knowing there were plenty of others in the party, the parliamentary offices, and the Green caucus, who were very unhappy with Kerekere’s behaviour.
Of course, the Shaw faction’s campaign against Kerekere came too late to stop the rebel woke MP being awarded the interim ranking of number four on the party list for 2023. Her opponents then sought to get her demoted in the subsequent membership vote on the party list. A number of party staffers spoke to journalists, and reiterated that there had been problems with Kerekere’s behaviour in the Greens, including making allegations of bullying.
It seems that the gloves were then off. Kerekere’s social justice faction fought back, telling journalists that these allegations were a case of “dirty politics” being played out against her. A “whispering campaign” and a “kangaroo court” were then cited as pushing her to resign from the party.
The Greens are now heading into an election campaign in which MPs and activists in both the environmental and social justice sides of the party are making accusations that their opponents are lying and plotting against each other. This is hardly a unified and healthy base for campaigning. What’s more, both sides have been leaking damaging material about each other, and this is not necessarily about to end with Kerekere’s departure.
The Growth of the Greens’ woke faction
Historically the Green Party has always contained a mix of three ideological threads – environmental, social justice, and socialist politics. In reality, the socialist element of the party has long gone, especially with the departure of MPs like Keith Locke and Sue Bradford. The environmental element has also been seriously in decline – especially with the loss of co-leaders like Jeanette Fitzsimmons and Russel Norman.
Rising up to supersede the socialist and environmental factions is the social justice milieu – which accounts for most of the caucus and the activist base. As long-time Green Party commentator Gordon Campbell wrote on Monday, “This social justice strand now predominates.”
Campbell argues that although everyone in the Greens has some interest in environmentalism, there are few MPs and candidates in the party who focus primarily on this: “Within the 2023 provisional list, only two candidates – James Shaw and Lam Pham – would be seen as having a clear and primary focus on the environment.” The rest, Campbell suggests are more from the woke side of the Greens: “their backgrounds and route into politics have mainly been via the social justice side of the policy ledger.”
This means that the Greens are now less focused on environmentalism or even traditional leftwing politics. According to Campbell this urgently needs correction. He believes that in terms of rhetoric, “Water quality, intensive dairying and renewable energy” get attention, but not much action. He therefore argues that “the Greens need more advocates in Parliament for whom environment degradation (local and planetary) is their main, driving concern.”
The Greens capture by cultural issues was also discussed this week by leftwing political commentator Steven Cowan: “Seemingly marooned within its own middle-class ghetto, it is of little surprise that identity politics has taken precedence within the Green Party. While it is economic issues that are pressing hard on the lives of working class New Zealanders, its MPs are largely focused on issues surrounding race and gender.”
Will the Greens’ identity fight hurt the party in the election?
The resignation of Elizabeth Kerekere, and the party’s ongoing fights over their identity and focus could be a vote loser for the Greens in 2023. For example, political journalist Richard Harman wrote on Monday that “History suggests that the Greens will take a hit in the polls as a consequence of Kerekere’s move”.
He points to the 2017 election-year saga when the Green vote collapsed after co-leader Metiria Turei’s welfare benefit story unravelled, causing her to resign. The Green vote halved as a result, ending up at only 6.5 per cent. Likewise, in 2020 when Shaw caused a scandal by breaking party policy in giving government money to a private school, the party support plummeted, recovering just in time to prevent the party being turfed out of power at the election.
Much will depend on whether the faction-fighting is now exhausted by Kerekere’s departure. Although Kerekere appears to have burnt off any support she once had within the caucus, her social justice supporters amongst activists have clearly not accepted defeat or decided to unite behind the leadership. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan reports this week that many in the party are “deeply committed to Kerekere. They were not convinced by the allegations and believed it was a stitch-up.”
Reports of further resignations in the party are now coming out. Coughlan reports that members he spoke to are currently considering cancelling their party memberships in disgust at the way Shaw and Davidson have handled Kerekere. He quoted one activist saying, “I think there are a lot of questions still to answer about this process and the culture inside our caucus”.
There is also talk about whether such activists, Green voters, or even other Green MPs might now switch loyalties to Te Pāti Māori. Kerekere’s closest ally in the Green caucus, Teanau Tuiono, has apparently been sought after by Te Pāti Māori.
There is certainly a sense that Te Pāti Māori is now a more appealing option for Green activists and voters with a social justice orientation. In this regard, Thomas Coughlan wrote this week: “Te Pāti Māori has reemerged with a kaupapa achingly close to the Greens’ own. For the first time in a very long time, Green voters have a credible option to the left of Labour with whom to cast their vote if they feel unhappy with what the current leadership is delivering.”
The Greens are distracted from the things that matter
Probably the most damaging criticism that the Greens will hear in the run-up to the election – especially from their own target voters – is that their MPs and Ministers simply haven’t been focusing on the things that matter. And voters might well ask whether the Greens have achieved much while in government this term.
Tough questions will be asked about whether James Shaw has done enough in his climate change ministerial role – or whether the Greens are guilty, as Greenpeace has argued, of “greenwashing” for the Labour Government.
On the question of the housing affordability crisis, the Greens will have to answer whether Marama Davidson has really made a difference in her role as Minister responsible for homelessness. Just last week, it was reported that, although Labour allocated $75m to homelessness in the last budget, Davidson has failed to even spend one million dollars of that allocation. Her critics will point out that instead, Davidson’s most notable actions in the past year have not been about homelessness at all, but about calling out “cis white men” for being responsible for violence, and for promoting te reo branded chocolate.
Increasingly it looks like the Greens have focused inwardly on themselves instead of making progress on their core business. Even their own supporters could suspect that they have fallen back into the worst type of self-absorbed student activism.
As one example of how the culture wars have disabled the Greens, some activists talk about how for the last few years the biggest and most ferocious debate in the party has been about transgender issues. Of course, this is a highly important issue to the two sides within the Greens, but the party became somewhat immobilised by internal debates on this issue at the expense of the Greens being able to focus on issues like the environment, climate, and inequality. This seems to sum up the current problems of the Greens.
Leftwing blogger and Green voter Martyn Bradbury put it like this: “We urgently need a Green Party focused on serving the people and not feeding their own ambitions.” He makes the following plea: “If the Green Party are finished starting culture wars with white cis males and politically self mutilating themselves, could we get back to climate change and the looming economic recession?”
However, things could be worse. So far, the Greens have managed to avoid splitting their party over climate change politics. Environmentalists in the wider green movement are currently divided about whether the climate cause requires disruptive and radical direct action. At the moment this is playing out with the Restore Passenger Rail protests blocking roads in Wellington.
The Green-backed mayor of Wellington, Tory Whanau, has now come out strongly against the highly-disruptive climate change protestors, upsetting many Greens who see this as selling out. So far, the Green Party as a whole haven’t been challenged by the media to take a side over the protests. So far they’ve got away without being forced to choose to condemn or support the road-closing stunts. This could be the ultimate schism amongst Green MPs.
The Consequences of Green Schisms
In the end, much of the current pettiness in the Greens could be highly consequential – it could affect the outcome of who governs the country after the general election.
Some commentators believe that the Greens are just too strong to let civil wars sink the party below the five per cent threshold or cause Chloe Swarbrick to lose Auckland Central. For example, Thomas Coughlan argues that the “Green party vote is fine – for now” and that this “rusted-on base of 5-6 per cent has a high tolerance for party shenanigans”.
However, in a scenario in which the Green civil war continued, or if the party became too associated with culture wars in the run-up to the election, then the party’s guarantee of getting five percent or winning Auckland Central might not be so certain. And if the Greens were out of Parliament then the chances of Labour being able to form a new government would be almost zero.
In 1991, the world was shocked to learn actor Michael J. Fox had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
He was just 29 years old and at the height of Hollywood fame, a year after the release of the blockbuster Back to the Future III. This week, documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie will be released. It features interviews with Fox, his friends, family and experts.
Parkinson’s is a debilitating neurological disease characterised by motor symptoms including slow movement, body tremors, muscle stiffness, and reduced balance. Fox has already broken his arms, elbows, face and hand from multiple falls.
It is not genetic, has no specific test and cannot be accurately diagnosed before motor symptoms appear. Its cause is still unknown, although Fox is among those who thinks chemical exposure may play a central role, speculating that “genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger”.
In research published today in ACS Central Science, we built an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can predict Parkinson’s disease with up to 96% accuracy and up to 15 years before a clinical diagnosis based on the analysis of chemicals in blood.
While this AI tool showed promise for accurate early diagnosis, it also revealed chemicals that were strongly linked to a correct prediction.
Fox woke up one morning to notice his pinky finger was ‘auto-animated’.
However, the prevalence of such symptoms in many other medical conditions means early signs of Parkinson’s disease can be overlooked and the condition may be mismanaged, contributing to increased hospitalisation rates and ineffective treatment strategies.
At UNSW we collaborated with experts from Boston University to build an AI tool that can analyse mass spectrometry datasets (a technique that detects chemicals) from blood samples.
To train the AI model we used a subset of data consisting of a random selection of 39 participants who later developed Parkinson’s. They were matched to 39 control participants who did not. The AI tool was given blood data from participants, all of whom were healthy at the time of blood donation. This meant the blood could provide early signs of the disease.
Drawing on blood data from the EPIC study, the AI tool was then used to conduct 100 “experiments” and we assessed the accuracy of 100 different models for predicting Parkinson’s.
Overall, AI could detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 96% accuracy. The AI tool was also used to help us identify which chemicals or metabolites were likely linked to those who later developed the disease.
Metabolites are chemicals produced or used as the body digests and breaks down things like food, drugs, and other substances from environmental exposure.
Our bodies can contain thousands of metabolites and their concentrations can differ significantly between healthy people and those affected by disease.
Our research identified a chemical, likely a triterpenoid, as a key metabolite that could prevent Parkinson’s disease. It was found the abundance of triterpenoid was lower in the blood of those who developed Parkinson’s compared to those who did not.
Triterpenoids are known neuroprotectants that can regulate oxidative stress – a leading factor implicated in Parkinson’s disease – and prevent cell death in the brain. Many foods such as apples and tomatoes are rich sources of triterpenoids.
A synthetic chemical (a polyfluorinated alkyl substance) was also linked as something that might increase the risk of the disease. This chemical was found in higher abundances in those who later developed Parkinson’s.
More research using different methods and looking at larger populations is needed to further validate these results.
AI could be used to detect Parkinson’s Disease years before symptoms develop. Shutterstock
As researchers, we find hope in the potential use of AI technologies to improve patient quality of life and reduce health-care costs by accurately detecting diseases early.
We are excited for the research community to try our AI tool, which is publicly available.
This research was performed with Mr Chonghua Xue and A/Prof Vijaya Kolachalama (Boston University).
Diana Zhang completed this research while undertaking a Fulbright Future Scholarship funded by the Kinghorn Foundation. She is supported by a Scientia PhD and RTP scholarship from the University of New South Wales.
William Alexander Donald receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT200100798).
The Royal Easter Show and the NSW Police recently announced a ban on “rapper music” following the murder of Pacific young person, Uati “Pele” Faletolu last year.
The Royal Easter Show’s general manager Murray Wilton said:
If you look at the psychology of music … there is scientific fact the type of music that is played actually predicts somebody’s behaviour… There will be no music played [at the show] that is rapper music, or has swearing words through it, or has any offensive language.
This rather comic invention of a new genre “rapper music” was actually aimed at banning, we suspect, “drill” or “drill rap”. This is entirely in chorus with NSW Police Strike Force Raptor, which has spent a disproportionate amount of taxpayer money pursuing, disrupting and generally harassing drill musicians under the premise that their lyrics incite violence or help recruit gang members.
As we point out in our recent paper, drill is a variant of hip-hop. It is musically innovative, lyrically inventive and globally popular. It is also particularly popular among young people in Western Sydney. Its lyrics do often deal with street life and sometimes violent crime, using a particular street vernacular.
But drill is not alone in exploring violent themes. Country music, for example, also has a long tradition of dealing in murder. In popular music, Nick Cave cemented his international reputation with an album of murder ballads.
In fact, there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that music causes crime. What research has shown is that policing music and musicians often criminalises or marginalises young people, particularly young people of colour. It also pushes particular musical genres underground, away from legitimate venues. Moreover, for many artists seeking to emphasis their authentic street-cred, being pursued by police is not really so bad for business.
Two days after the media reports of a ban, in something of an embarrassing backflip, the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW chief executive Brock Gilmour said organisers, not police, had decided to prohibit music containing swearwords:
If there’s rap music that’s quite pleasant and there’s no offensive language, they can play it, that’s not an issue.
What is drill music?
Drill is a subgenre of hip-hop that originated in Chicago in the early 2010s. It is characterised by its aggressive, trap-style beats and lyrics that often focus on themes of violence, crime and life on the streets. The music is often associated with gang culture and has been subject to controversy and criminalisation due to its perceived links to real-life violence and criminal activity.
Drill in Australia was largely pioneered by ONEFOUR, a group of five core members with Pacific Islander background from the Western Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt. They have gained international success and broad popularity, despite having encountered significant obstacles to performing in their own country.
Police have systematically scrutinised their music and excluded them from performing at, among other venues, the Sydney Opera House for the Vivid Festival in 2021, claiming one of their songs could incite violence. The story of ONEFOUR has turned police into musicologists and musicians into criminals.
Music as a crime
The criminalisation of rap and hip-hop is not new, as it has long been perceived as a threat to social order and public safety. Artists such as Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg, and even Rage Against the Machine have faced surveillance, censorship and curtailment.
N.W.A’s song Fuck Tha Police was for a time banned on Australian national youth network triple j, and Akon and Eminem’s performances have been banned due to violence and offensive lyrics. Jazz and punk genres played by marginalised people have also been policed.
Today, hip-hop has become mainstream and respectable, yet criminal justice agencies have become more even proactive in policing and prosecuting particular artists, and there has been an increase in the use of lyrics as evidence in the United States and United Kingdom. The fact is, though, as hip-hop become more popular around the world, crime rates have meanwhile dropped, even in major cities like New York or Los Angeles, the home of gangsta rap. Does this mean hip-hop prevents crime? Well, no, but it does highlight the fallacy of drawing such causal links.
Musicriminology
We know music can touch us emotionally, make us cry, encourage us to dance, and even provide a soundtrack to social change. Scholars have long studied music’s role in protest and resistance – even its role in redemption in correctional settings.
The confusion between rap music and the so-called street gangs has been studied, and the salacious pleasures and desires wrapped up in violent or crime storytelling have been analysed by researchers. One of us (Murray) coined the term “musicriminology” to describe these fields of research and scholarship. We have further suggested that police targeting of drill artists constitutes a form of aesthetic policing – the pursuit of rappers police don’t like the sounds, symbols or looks of.
While we can clearly point to the fact that policing practices and social reactions to music can criminalise and stigmatise artists, the link between music and offending behaviour is far more complex. Counterintuitively, for example, researchers found listeners attracted to extreme music (such as certain types of death metal and rap) report positive psychosocial outcomes such as empowerment, joy and peacefulness.
We are not suggesting all music is suitable for all occasions. Most parents would want to keep their young children from watching horror films, just as they might not want them to listen to drill music.
Drill could be best described as a form of music that reflects the lives and street codes of marginalised groups of youth, and does it in a way that fictionalises, embellishes and overemphasises their “gangsta” credentials. It sometimes provides a platform for goading other groups through rhymes.
However, it is unlikely to turn anyone to crime. That is not to say those involved in crime might not also like to listen to it – just as they might like to hear Johnny Cash croon that he “shot a man just to watch him die”.
In anything, blanket bans on musical styles are likely to work against the wellbeing of already marginalised groups, stoking social and cultural division, and providing the context for further criminalisation.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you look at the justice policies of the main political parties you’ll see references to gangs (ACT), violent criminals (National), greater investment in policing (Labour), social justice (Green Party) and problems with the criminal justice system (Te Pāti Māori).
What you won’t see is any reference to white-collar crime. This could perhaps be because New Zealand doesn’t have a lot of it. But a more realistic view is that we don’t invest in detecting, deterring or punishing white-collar crime. We don’t even really talk about it.
Take cartels as an example. Cartels are essentially where two or more businesses agree not to compete. This affects competitive markets and hurts consumers, causing increased prices (via price fixing) or decreased supply (by restricting output).
But cartels are notoriously difficult to detect due to an absence of formal arrangements and their inherent secrecy.
Leniency for whistleblowers
Cartel activity was criminalised in 2021 in Aotearoa New Zealand. Anyone found guilty can now face a prison sentence, along with substantial financial penalties.
However, the rules offer generous leniency and immunity provisions for cartel participants who reveal the existence of the cartel to the Commerce Commission. The commission won’t take legal action against the whistleblower if they cooperate in the prosecution of the other cartel members.
The aim of these provisions is to destabilise cartels by encouraging whistleblowing. They serve as a deterrent because they make joining a cartel riskier by increasing the likelihood of getting caught. Requiring the whistleblower to cooperate in a prosecution increases the likelihood of successful cases due to the evidence that can be presented to the court.
Along with this leniency, the whistleblowing firm may remain anonymous and not suffer the reputational damage attached to other cartel participants. The disclosing individual or firm also retains all the benefits of the offending.
Where a firm is involved in cartel behaviour, any leniency or immunity granted is typically extended to directors, officers and employees involved in the conduct.
By the numbers
Such provisions have existed since 2004. Before criminalisation in 2021, leniency was automatic for self-reported cartel activity where there was no existing investigation, if the whistleblower met certain conditions, including admitting and stopping the bad behaviour and providing evidence for any prosecution.
Since 2012, 106 firms or individuals have been charged with anti-competitive conduct.
Figures for 2022 include applications for leniency and criminal immunity. Author provided
Our data shows an upward trend in leniency applications and a significant increase in applications for leniency and immunity in 2022 after criminalisation. Requests for leniency averaged 4.4 per year prior to 2022 but increased to 19 in 2022. We found that 43 of the 44 requests for leniency prior to 2022 were granted, while nine of the 19 requests in 2022 were granted.
A further concession made to cartels is the adjustment of penalties when it’s decided firms can’t pay the financial penalty that would otherwise apply. While not unique to cartels, four of ten recent anti-competitive cases had penalties reduced when the company claimed it couldn’t pay.
In one case, potential financial penalties ranged between NZ$400,000 and $650,000. In the end this was reduced to $62,500 based on what it was determined the company could pay.
The problem with leniency
The situation raises several questions and issues. First, the messaging is problematic. Offering leniency implies a certain level of acceptance by the community.
As cartel activity is often described as the most serious form of anti-competitive conduct, it’s difficult to reconcile this with an absence of sanctions for those who admit participating in it.
Secondly, there’s the question of equality of treatment in our justice system. Is it fair that only certain (white-collar) offenders enjoy leniency provisions? Anyone participating in cartel conduct can apply for immunity or leniency. This is not the case for those engaged in other criminal activity.
Third, is justice served when a firm can retain the benefits from the historic cartel activity and incur no formal sanction? This can mean the party that engages in the most serious misconduct, such as instigating the cartel, can avoid sanction. Meanwhile, less culpable participants are punished.
Fourth, there’s the problem of reducing or removing financial penalties. We acknowledge the Sentencing Act requires the court to consider the ability of an offender to pay. But we also suggest a market outcome is achieved if a financial sanction results in an offending firm ceasing to trade.
Finally, while it can be argued that leniency provisions help detect cartels, it can also be argued that an absence of leniency provisions deters cartel activity due to the potential for sanctions.
What appears to be a focus on detection rather than deterrence is inconsistent with the approach taken with most other criminal activity. There may well be responses to these questions and issues that prove satisfactory to the community. But they are not obvious.
We need a public debate about why certain types of white-collar criminals have a standing offer of immunity or leniency for confessing to their bad behaviour and divulging the details of others who may be complicit. Justice is challenged when people engaging in the same activity receive different sanctions, and any pretence of getting tough on cartel crime is undermined.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Pacific Media Network broadcaster and community activist Ernestina Maro (left) and Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group chair Rachael Mario share the microphone to talk up Rotuman Language Week events.
Cultural and social justice events feature in the eight day programme.
Last night the Titiri o Waitangi legacy and Rotuman community responses were aired at the Rotuman Community Centre and Whānau Hub in Auckland’s Mount Roskill.
Tonight Polynesian Panthers co-founder Will ‘Ilolahia spoke about the 1970s Dawn Raids era and the latest “raids’ controversy.
Among the interesting insights that ‘Ilolahia shared about the legacy of the Polynesian Panthers in education, human rights and social justice was the philosophy about the “panthers” themselves.
“The nature of the panther is that he never attacks,” ‘Ilolahia said.
“But if anyone attacks him or backs him into a corner, the panther somes up to wipe that aggressor or attacker out — absolutely, resolutely, wholly, thoroughly and completely!”
A slide from Will ‘Ilolahia’s talk tonight as part of the Auckland Rotuman Friendship Group’s Rotuman Language Week. Image: Will ‘Ilolahia
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Phillips, Associate Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Director, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Australian National University
The 2023 federal budget has a strong emphasis on the cost-of-living, with a A$14.6 billion plan designed to help Australians who are “under the pump”.
The headline measure is a $40 per fortnight increase in the JobSeeker payment. But it also includes expanding the eligibility for parenting payment (single), providing a moderately more generous JobSeeker payment for those aged between 55 and 60 and a 15% increase to rent assistance.
These measures on an annual basis put around $2 billion a year into low and middle income families. Of these, 95% go to low and middle income families and around 70% go to the lowest 40%.
But despite the investment, my analysis shows they will not make a significant difference to poverty in Australia.
There are a range of other measures such as an energy rebate, age care worker pay increases and health-related benefits such as Medicare changes that will also assist lower income households. However, the focus of this piece is on permanent changes to the tax and cash welfare system from this budget.
While the welfare payment increases are welcome, they represent a less than 2% increase in the welfare budget each year. As such, they can only be expected to make a small impact on the living standards of the lowest income households and only a very modest impact on poverty.
The federal government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee found an increase in the JobSeeker payment of around $256 per fortnight was required to bring the payment in line with 90% of the age pension.
The $40 per fortnight increase is only 16% of that recommended increase. So the increase in this year’s budget falls well below what the committee found was required to significantly improve adequacy of the payment.
The budget does go much harder for single parents, by raising the age at which the parenting payment cuts out from 8 to 14. This was very close to the committee’s finding on the level of JobSeeker payment for this group.
It also said a substantial increase in rent assistance was required, given the many years of indexation that did not keep up with low income rents.
This budget provides a modest, rather than substantial increase. However, a 15% increase is still very welcome.
The budget provides around $1.5 billion per year in increases to working age payments compared to the committee recommending around $5.7 billion per year. This leaves the government substantial work to do to bridge the significant gap that exists between JobSeeker and the age pension.
When we take the budget measures into account, the poverty rate in Australia lowers fractionally from around 13.6% to 13.3% of the population (around 80,000 people).
Of more interest perhaps is poverty for specific lower income households. For those households whose main source of income is JobSeeker their poverty rate remains at 86%. Their poverty gap does shift down by 10% from around $10,500 to $9,400 per annum on a per adult basis. But they are so far below the poverty line, this budget doesn’t do enough to shift them out of poverty.
The other group to shift on poverty is single parents. The poverty rate has shifted down from 34.2% to 30.8%. Their poverty gap has lowered from $2,171 to $1,818 per year – a reduction of 16%. Renters will also experience a modest reduction in their poverty rate from 29.6% to 28.6%.
When you look the budget, it is evident that making significant inroads to poverty is not cheap. This budget makes a useful start and probably the best seen in many years. But future budgets will need to push much harder to make a more significant difference to poverty and cost-of-living pressures for those in greatest need.
Ben Phillips was a member of the interim economic inclusion advisory committee that reported to the government on the adequacy of JobKeepr and other payments.
Surplus or not, the budget papers show us living through pretty awful times.
Living standards measured by the buying power of wages are set to go backwards in 2023-24 as wages are expected to grow by 3.75% while prices rise by 6%.
Separate figures released by the Bureau of Statistics as Treasurer Jim Chalmers was preparing to deliver his speech show the volume of goods and services bought from Australian retailers has shrunk for the past six months.
Living standards measured by gross domestic product are set to go backwards in 2023-24 as total GDP grows by an unusually low 1.5% while Australia’s population grows by 1.7%, producing a so-called “per capita recession”.
The good news on the government’s finances is largely historical.
The budget position for 2023-24 was improved by $42.15 billion because of measures largely outside the government’s control (so-called “parameter and other variations”).
Chief among these has been an unexpectedly big increase in the number of Australians in work and subject to income tax (as the unemployment rate has fallen to a half-century low), and much higher prices for exports than expected in the last budget (roughly twice as high in the case of iron ore), producing much higher profits to tax.
The government has chosen to spend just $12 billion of the $42.15 billion bounty, which has allowed the rest of the bounty to produce a (small) budget surplus of $4.2 billion in 2023-24.
After 2023-24, it will be deficits again for at least a decade on the budget’s projections, as the unusual circumstances that delivered the unexpected $42.15 billion fall away.
The unemployment rate is set to climb from its long-term low of 3.5% to 4.25% by mid next year and to 4.5% by mid-2025. The number of Australians in work and in the income tax system is expected to grow by just 1% in 2023-24 and 2024-25 after growing by 2.5% in 2022-23. The iron ore price is expected to halve within a year.
Government income is set to grow 8.8% in 2022-23 and 5.1% in 2023-24. After that, it is scheduled to barely grow in 2024-25, climbing just 0.5%, before returning to growth of 4.4% and 4.9 in 2025-26 and 2026-27.
Given that the costs of some government programs are expected to grow by a lot (the cost of National Disability Insurance Scheme is expected to grow by an average of 10.4% per year and the cost of funding hospitals by 6.5% per year), it looks as if the government is going to have to find more money.
Spending on defence is set to climb 22% over the next four years, and doubtless by more beyond, as spending on building and buying the nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement ramps up.
Chalmers has sensibly abandoned the Coalition’s quaint commitment to keep the tax to GDP ratio to 23.9%, which is just as well because the influx of revenue scheduled for 2023-24 will to take it to 23.9% (25.9% including non-tax revenue) before it falls back.
Longer term, Chalmers will have to raise more tax or cut government services. The increases in the tax on large superannuation balances, tobacco excise and the petroleum resource rent tax are a sign of what’s to come.
The ultra-expensive Stage 3 income tax cuts deliver a hard-to-defend $2,000 per year to high earners on $120,000 per year. Although legislated back before COVID, they are not due to take effect until mid next year, meaning there’s still time (and another budget) in which to wind them back and reorientate them to Australians who need them more.
Where Chalmers has supported Australians hit by ultra-high inflation in this budget, he has tried to do it cheaply.
Boosting JobSeeker and related payments by the $128 per week Chalmers’s economic inclusion advisory committee wanted would have cost $5.7 billion per year. Instead, Chalmers will lift it by $20 per week (and slightly more for most Australians on it aged 55 and over) at a cost of $1.3 billion per year.
As important as extending parenting payments to single parents with children up to 14 years of age will be those who need it. The measure is budgeted to cost just half a billion per year.
Boosting Commonwealth rent assistance by up to $16 per week (the “largest increase in more than 30 years”, Chalmers says) will cost a tad more, around $700 million per year.
The cost of the energy package (which the treasurer says will take $500 per year off some power bills and three-quarters of a percentage point off inflation) is marked in the budget as “not for publication”, presumably in deference to negotiations with the states which will co-fund it.
Chalmers said during his press conference this budget had been much harder to put together than his first. What he could have added is that his next budget is shaping up to be even harder.
Economic growth has been revised down. So convinced are financial markets the economy is weakening, that ahead of the budget they were pricing in no further Reserve Bank interest rate increases in this year and one interest rate cut, by December.
The economic forecasts in the budget suggest the coming per-capital recession won’t turn into an actual recession. Economic growth is expected to climb from an ultra-low 1.5% in 2023-24 to a still-low 2.25% in 2024-25 and then to 2.75%.
Inflation, which was 7% in the year to March, is forecast to fall to 6% in the year to June, and then to a less-worrying 3.25% by June 2024.
Although the forecasts move in the right direction, they are not good. Chalmers said getting things right this time required a “fine balance”. Future budgets are shaping up to require just as much.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A big incentive for doctors to bulk bill, a modest $40 a fortnight rise in JobSeeker and extra rent assistance are highlights of a Labor budget that juggles targeted cost-of-living relief with containing inflation.
The government will triple the incentive paid to GPs to bulk bill for families with children under 16, pensioners and Commonwealth concession card holders.
The government says this will cover 11.6 million Australians and cost $3.5 billion over the forward estimates. It is part of an injection of $5.7 billion into the problem-ridden Medicare system.
The budget is aimed firmly at the most vulnerable and has a significant focus on women. However, those on middle incomes receive little – although families with children can benefit from the extra bulk billing.
The government has bowed to pressure for an across-the-board rise in JobSeeker. But the $40 a fortnight increase falls far short of the fortnightly $256 recommended by its Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee.
Those 55 and over who have been on the payment nine months will get a slightly larger increase, as people over 60 do now.
Delivering his second budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said inflation remained “our primary economic challenge.
“It drives rate rises, it erodes real wages. Which is why this budget is carefully calibrated to alleviate inflationary pressures, not to add to them.”
Chalmers said the budget’s suite of measures to ease pressure on households would take 0.75 of a percentage point off inflation in 2023-24.
Inflation is expected to fall from 6% in 2022-23 to 3.25% in 2023-24, before returning to the Reserve Bank target range (between 2% and 3%) in 2024-25.
Unemployment will increase to 4.25% in 2023-24, and 4.5% the following year. Real wages are expected to start rising early next year.
The budget forecasts that this financial year will see the first surplus – $4.2 billion – in 15 years.
This will be followed by a string of deficits: $13.9 billion in 2023-24, $35.1 billion in 2024-25; $36.6 billion in 2025-26, $28.5 billion in 2026-27, with a cumulative total across the budget period of $109.9 billion. The deficits are lower, however, than earlier forecasts.
Revenue next financial year will be 26.4% of GDP while spending will be 26.6%. Net debt will be 22.3% of GDP.
The targeted $14.6 billion cost-of-living package over the forward estimates will see, in a federal-state deal, more than 500,000 households have up to $500 deducted from their power bill in the next financial year. Small businesses will also get relief.
The government is also investing $1 billion in assistance for low-cost loans for double glazing, solar panels and other improvements for homes to contain energy costs.
The increase in JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, Austudy and other income support payments will cost $4.9 billion and go to about 1.1 million people.
Eligibility for the parenting payment (single) is being liberalised, going to parents (overwhelmingly mothers) until their youngest child is aged 14, rather than the present age of eight. This will cost $1.9 billion over the budget period.
A 15% increase in the maximum rates of Commonwealth rent assistance will mean an extra $31 a fortnight for those renting in the private market and community housing. Chalmers said this was the largest increase in more than 30 years.
Tax increases and measures to improve the budget position include rises in the tobacco excise ($3 billion over the budget period), changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax ($2.4 billion), and a four-year extension of the GST compliance program ($3.8 billion).
As part of a bid to make Australia “a renewable energy superpower”, the budget allocates a further $4 billion. There will be a $2 billion investment in a new Hydrogen Headstart program.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This budget is the culmination of a tug of war between the government’s imperative to fight inflation and the siren call from Labor’s base to help people who are struggling.
The government has delivered measures to ease cost-of-living pressures on the most vulnerable, including on income support and rent assistance. The critics, especially but not only from the left, will say it hasn’t done enough.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says it’s a balance between “doing what we can for the people doing it tough and keeping the pressure on inflation”. He told his news conference that on cost-of-living relief, “we’ve genuinely put in our best effort”.
But another bunch of critics, loud among them the opposition, will insist the budget wasn’t responsible enough – that it in fact squibs the inflation fight.
The rises in JobSeeker and rent assistance are modest. Indeed $40 a fortnight for JobSeeker is smaller than the Morrison government’s $50 increase.
But a big boost would have been inflationary, and thus ultimately counter-productive for those it was supposed to help, and many others, too.
While Chalmers insists his cost-of-living measures are restrained, some economists will maintain they’ll in fact add to the inflation problem.
Prime Minister’s Anthony Albanese decision last year to establish the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (as part of a deal with crossbencher David Pocock to pass industrial relations legislation) can be seen as crucial in the budget process in the last few weeks.
That committee’s report set a benchmark by which the government could be held to account. The $40 looks punier when compared to the committee’s advice for a $256 increase in JobSeeker.
When that committee produced its report, Chalmers hosed down expectations of what the government could do. But the welfare lobby had loud voices, and a lot of allies outside its ranks. And Labor backbenchers decided it was time to say their piece.
The campaign for compassion became intense. Minimalism became untenable.
And then the latest revenue upgrades arrived from Treasury. They both increased the pressure to do more, and made it possible.
Meanwhile those revenue numbers (driven by high employment and high commodity prices) imposed another pressure – to deliver a surplus in this financial year.
This served the economic purpose of demonstrating the government’s fiscal credentials. It also sent a powerful political “up yours” to the Coalition, who came to the brink of surplus only to have it snatched away by COVID.
It’s true the projected surplus is followed by the budget plunging back into the red over the next several years. And indeed, given the poor economic outlook it outlines, with its forecast of declining economic growth, that might be what happens.
But recent history shows how things can change in a budget’s out years. There is another possible scenario. Chalmers can use the looming deficit numbers in his bid to drive cost savings in expensive programs, notably the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This may (together with some assistance on the revenue side) help contain those deficits in later years.
Some will criticise the budget for a lack of ambition. Why didn’t it get rid of part of those Stage 3 tax cuts? Why did it confine its changes to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax to tinkering? Couldn’t it have gone further with superannuation tax breaks? Doesn’t the government realise that this was the budget calling for boldness, because the next one will already have the election in mind? Why be the tortoise rather than the hare?
The answers lie in the nature of the Albanese government and its prime minister. Albanese wants to change things, but to minimise the risk in doing so and to maximise the government’s longevity.
While a second term for Labor looks a very good bet, given the government’s popularity and the parlous state of the Liberals, there is never certainty in politics.
Albanese lived at the heart of the disorderly Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era. He puts a high value on process, order, maintaining public confidence and delivering to the base (albeit less than some demand), while not provoking swinging voters.
Those in the centre of the income scale, feeling squeezed by escalating interest rates, may feel left out in this budget. This is despite Chalmers declaring there is “a lot […] for middle Australians”, such as the bulk billing changes for families with children. But if the budget doesn’t deliver much to these people, not does it overtly poke them in the eye.
If this budget has plenty of critics around its edges, they will probably find it hard to deliver a killer blow to its core.
Michelle Grattan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Chapman, Director, Policy Impact, College of Business and Economics, Australian National University
Almost three billion hectares of farmland is in poor condition worldwide – an area the size of Russia. Biodiversity is in freefall. Extinctions are rising. Wild animal populations have fallen almost 70% since 1970.
Restoring damaged land and bringing back ecosystems is phenomenally expensive, estimated at A$21 trillion globally.
The sheer scale of the problem is beyond the capacity of traditional approaches to funding repair. That’s one reason why the Australian government is looking to alternatives such as a nature repair market. This, the government hopes, would boost biodiversity – especially on private land such as farms.
To make this market work, the government might consider creating a new version of Australia’s well-known HECS higher education loans. Call it FECS – Farm Environment Contribution Scheme.
The lead author of this article, Bruce Chapman, helped create HECS – the world’s first national income-contingent loan for higher education. Co-author David Lindemayer, ecologist and conservation biologist, has spent decades exploring ways to preserve biodiversity on farmland.
We have shown how farmers could access loans similar to HECS but based on annual revenue, not income to undertake work helping both their business and restoration of nature. This work will boost farm productivity and biodiversity with farmers repaying the loan when their revenues permit.
Why is this needed?
Australia has large swathes of degraded land and at least 100 species have gone extinct since European colonisation. To prevent further extinctions, the government announced it would introduce a new nature repair market.
This market could, if done well, tackle some of the drivers of biodiversity loss and land degradation – particularly on our farmland. Protecting habitat and waterways, preventing erosion and improving drought resilience would all be eligible.
Take farm dams. The vast majority of the 650,000 dams in the Murray-Darling Basin are in poor condition. To renovate one by fencing and re-vegetating around it costs about $9000.
But farmers can make this money back. Livestock with access to better quality drinking water gains weight more quickly, giving farmers more cow to sell. There’s a climate benefit too, as renovated dams change rapidly from carbon sources to carbon sinks. Plus, healthier dams provide habitat for more birds, frogs and dragonflies.
The question is – how do you fund this market? Creating tradeable certificates is one way but could be complicated. Another option is to create a rolling fund, where biodiversity loans are given to farmers to do nature repair work such as dam upgrades which help their bottom line – and wildlife.
Farm dams can be rich habitats for many species – but only if managed well. Shutterstock
How would this work with the nature repair scheme?
The federal government has pitched its planned nature repair market as an offset scheme: farmers and landholders do repair work and get biodiversity certificates which can be bought by, say, another farmer wanting to clear land.
But there’s a complementary, parallel approach. All farms experience large swings in annual revenues from forces outside a farmer’s control, such as rain, drought, floods and commodity price shocks. The best financial tool to help farmers undertake nature repair is the type which smooths their income. That’s where revenue-dependent loans could work.
Farmers would get the money needed for work on restoration and biodiversity recovery, and incur a debt to be repaid only when future revenue makes it possible. During bad years when farm income is low, repayments would be low or zero. During good years, more debt would be repaid to the government.
Tackling erosion is expensive, but could bring benefits to farmers and nature. Shutterstock
This isn’t wholly new. We already have policies allowing farmers to draw on savings from good years to help cope with poor years, coupled with associated tax benefits. By and large, this works well.
Loans like HECS have this vital income-smoothing feature – you only pay it back when you are in a position to do so. This scheme has worked well to share the cost of university education between the recipient, who will benefit directly from it, and society more broadly, which benefits from highly educated doctors, lawyers, business owners and so on.
With this type of loan, you don’t risk losing your farm if you can’t repay the debt. They’re better than extending your bank loan, because they don’t add to repayments until you’re in a position to make them.
If these loans were added to our nature market, it could get much more traction than a grant scheme. This is because most of the money outlaid by government would be returned as the loans are repaid. It creates a revolving fund, allowing the government to finance many more projects with many more farms than with a grant which, when spent, is gone.
What about the transparency problem?
Government schemes can attract people trying to game the system for their own financial benefit.
To avoid this, projects tied to a FECS loan would have ensure plantings, shelterbelts and dam renovations are effective and meet standards.
We could borrow from decades of monitoring hundreds of sustainable farms in endangered temperate woodlands to create robust standards.
These will be crucial to avoid perverse effects, such as the risk of promoting populations of the wrong species. Replanting along narrow strips can simply create habitat for damaging hyper-aggressive native birds like the noisy miner while introduced trees can harbour pests such as starlings. Robust monitoring will be needed to ensure restoration projects actually do produce more biodiversity.
Compliance monitoring – did a landowner do what they said they would?
Inputs monitoring – how much of the loan or grant was actually invested in fencing, planting trees or improving dams?
Outcomes monitoring – what was the end result? Did we get more species of native animals and invertebrates (including species of conservation concern)?
As we wrestle with the best way forward for Australia’s first nature repair market, we should seriously consider rolling out revenue-dependent loans for farmers.
It could make life easier for farmers at little cost to the government – and get the ball rolling on the ever more urgent issue of restoring land and the species that rely on it.
David Lindenmayer received funding from The Australian Government, the NSW and Victorian Governments, the Australian Research Council, and a series of private foundations interested in enhancing biodiversity conservation on farms and integrating conservation and agricultural production. He is a member of Birds Australia that seeks to boost bird conservation outcomes on farms
Bruce Chapman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Indonesia has sent 30 tonnes of relief supplies to aid the Vanuatu government’s recovery efforts post three major natural disasters earlier this year.
The humanitarian aid has been delivered on a My Indo Airline B737-800 cargo aircraft that departed from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and landed at Vanuatu’s Bauerfield International Airport today.
A representative of the Indonesian embassy in Canberra, Doddy, said the relief consisted mainly of food, tents and agricultural tools.
According to BBN Breaking News, Indonesia is also sending a 14-member humanitarian mission to Vanuatu.
“The team will include representatives from the Coordinating Ministry for Cultural Affairs, Foreign Affairs Ministry, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN),” BNN Breaking reported.
“They will work closely with local authorities and international organisations to ensure that the aid is distributed effectively and efficiently.”
“Indonesia’s commitment to providing aid to Vanuatu showcases its strong ties to the Pacific region and its continued efforts to promote regional cooperation and support.
It also highlights the importance of international solidarity and cooperation in addressing global challenges.”
However, the vice president of the Vanuatu Free West Papua Association, Lai Sakita, who was at the airport this morning, said the arrival of the relief supplies was “suspicious”.
He warned that the Vanuatu government needed to be very careful of the Indonesian assistance with the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) leaders summit due to be held in July this year.
The Free West Papua movement wants the MSG leaders to approve West Papua’s application to become a full member of the sub-regional agency at this summit.
Indonesian relief supplies at Vanuatu’s Bauerfield International Airport today . . . warning by West Papua supporters over July meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Image: Hilaire Bule/RNZ Pacific
A state of local emergency has been declared in Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today as heavy rain and thunderstorms affect the region.
Auckland’s Emergency Management duty controller said a band of heavy rain was expected to come across the Auckland region between now and 7pm.
Controller Parul Sood said that while there had been a lull in the rain further downfalls were possible with localised downpours of around 20 to 33 mm expected.
She said Auckland Council had received about 490 stormwater related calls, the majority of which were to do with surface flooding, and only about 18 to do with flooding in homes.
Fire and Emergency has received 277 weather-related call outs today, most from Auckland.
Its on-call commander for Tāmaki Makaurau, Brad Mosby, said that about one third of the calls were urgent.
He urged people to avoid unnecessary travel and stay clear of floodwaters.
Meanwhile, thunderstorms continued to roll across the top half of the North Island.
Metservice said severe thunderstorm warnings were in place for South Waikato, Matamata Piako, Western Bay Of Plenty, Taupo and Rotorua until just before 4.30pm.
A severe thunderstorm Watch was also in force for Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula and the rest of Waikato and Bay Of Plenty.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The French Polynesian economy has been given a positive assessment in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic by the body issuing the French Pacific franc.
The Overseas Emission Institute said it expected French Polynesia should return to its pre-crisis level of GDP in the first quarter of 2023.
It noted that tourism has rebounded, and hotels had restored their profitability.
Over the 2022 financial year, the overall turnover of the hotel industry reached US$540 million over US$289 million in 2021.
However, the report said inflation last year rose to 6.6 percent, with food prices alone going up by 12 percent.
Costs for housing rose 8.8 percent and for transport 8.2 percent, with fuel costs going up almost 28 percent.
Labour market picked up The report also said the labour market had picked up again with a 5.1 percent increase in the workforce.
It said in the first 10 months of last year, the salary mass grew by seven percent.
It said sectors such as energy, transport and the hotel industry carried out large-scale projects requiring significant loans, which were up by almost 60 percent from 2021 to last year.
The report credits the investment to the government’s economic relaunch programme for the period 2021 to 2023.
The institute added that the territorial elections and the geopolitical risks in the Pacific constitute factors of uncertainty likely to weigh on the behaviour of economic actors.
Unions sceptical However, the secretary-general of the main union group CSTP-FO doubts the figures are accurate.
Patrick Galenon told Tahiti-infos there were about 80,000 unemployed people.
“We are told that there is only nine percent unemployment and that people do not want to work. But that is not the situation,” he said.
Galenon added: “They want to work, unfortunately they can’t find any [jobs]. The extremists will say that many come from outside and that they find a job”.
He said what was needed was a real local employment law on which work had been done for 10 years.
“In the form of a joke, I said that when I go to Paris, I try to adapt to Paris. I put on a tie or a coat when I’m cold.
“If they come from outside, it’s not for our good looks but to earn money by setting up a business”, he said.
Galenon asked why none of the managers of the big hotels were Polynesian.
“We are also going to talk about land because it is linked: 80 percent of land is presumed to be state property.
“Where are the lands of the Polynesians? Afterwards, we are told, don’t worry, we are returning the land to the Polynesians.
“But we don’t give them anything back, it’s their land!,” he said.
He added that “on the other hand, we give back to people who are not the real owners. This will create even more problems”.
Galenon said home ownership had now slipped out of reach for many because almost US$500,000 was now needed to buy a house.
Election a “social revolution” In his view, last month’s election victory of the Tavini Huira’atira wasn’t a vote for independence, likening the result instead to a “social revolution”.
In an interview with Tahiti Nui TV, Galenon said he was “convinced that there are many people who were not for independence or for the blue party [Tavini’s party colours] but who voted blue because socially, the country was going very badly.”
Galenon said it was inconceivable to have products that had increased in price by 35 to 40 percent.
Measuring against the figures in France, Galenon said the monthly minimum wage was US$1563 while in France it was US$1940.
“In France it’s 35 hours [a week], here it’s 39 hours and unfortunately life here is 40 percent more expensive. So, we have a real problem,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Decades of industrial agriculture have caused environmental and social damage across the globe. Soils have deteriorated and plant and animal species are disappearing. Landscapes are degraded and small-scale farmers are struggling. It’s little wonder we’re looking for more sustainable and just ways of growing food and fibre.
Regenerative agriculture is one alternative creating a lot of buzz, especially in rich, industrially developed countries.
The term “regenerative agriculture” was coined in the 1970s. It’s generally understood to mean farming that improves, rather than degrades, landscape and ecological processes such as water, nutrient and carbon cycles.
Today, regenerative agriculture is promoted strongly by multinational food companies, advocacy groups and some parts of the farming community. And the Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground features celebrity activists promoting the regenerative agriculture movement.
But as our new research shows, regenerative agriculture may not be the transformation our global food system needs.
Industrial farming has left vast swathes of land degraded. Shutterstock
Farming must change
About 20-40% of the global land area is degraded. Agriculture caused 80% of global deforestation in recent decades and comprises 70% of freshwater use. It is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss on land and contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.
Global corporations such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, Cargill and Bayer dominate the food system. Some 70% of the global agrochemicals market is owned by just four companies and 90% of global grain trade is dominated by four businesses. This gives these corporations immense power.
Many small-scale farmers struggle to compete in global markets – especially those in poorer, less developed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In an effort to keep up, these farmers also often go into debt to buy chemicals and expensive machinery to boost production.
What’s regenerative agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture is proposed as a more sustainable alternative to industrial agriculture. It can include practices such as:
integrating livestock into cropping systems to replenish soil and reduce the cost of animal feed and fertiliser
leaving soil undisturbed and covered with plants to retain carbon, moisture and nutrients and reduce erosion
regularly moving livestock between paddocks to give pasture a chance to recover
using less synthetic chemicals in farming.
But can regenerative agriculture transform the global food system? Our research examined this question.
Regenerative agriculture can involve rotating livestock between pastures to increase soil health. Shutterstock
Our research findings
We explored the origins and current status of regenerative agriculture. We then compared this to other sustainable farming approaches: organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology.
We found regenerative agriculture shares many similarities with the first three movements listed above. Most importantly, it originated in the rich, industrially developed Global North, primarily North America, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
This means the movement often fails to credit Indigenous practices it draws from. It also tends to overlook the needs of farmers in the Global South and broader power inequality in the food system.
Like some other movements, regenerative agriculture is increasingly being embraced by corporations. Nestlé, for instance, aims to source 50% of its key ingredients through regenerative agriculture by 2030.
There are concerns companies may be using regenerative agriculture to “greenwash” their image. For example, experts warn corporations could be using the term to repackage existing commitments, rather than substantially improving their systems.
Agroecology: a different path
We also found that regenerative agriculture is threatening to marginalise another promising sustainable farming movement: agroecology.
Agroecology combines agronomy (agricultural science) and ecology, and also seeks to address injustice and inequity in food systems.
The movement is associated with the world’s largest smallholder farmer organisation, La Via Campesina, and has been endorsed by the United Nations.
Agroecology is a global movement endorsed by the UN. Shutterstock
Agroecology advocates for Indigenous knowledge and land rights, and support for small-scale farmers. It seeks to challenge neoliberalism, corporate dominance, and globalisation of food systems.
Some researchers question if agroecology alone can produce enough food for a growing global population. But 80% of the world’s food, in value terms, is produced by small family farms. And globally, we already grow enough food to feed ten billion people. The problem is how that food is distributed and wasted, and how much is made into ultra-processed foods and other products such as bio-fuels.
Agroecology brings many benefits to farmers and communities. An agroecology project in Chololo village in Tanzania, for example, saw the number of households eating three meals per day rise from 29% to 62%. Average household income increased by 18%. The average period of food shortage shortened by 62% and agricultural yields increased by up to 70%.
But the origins of the agroecology movement in the Global South, and its resistance to corporatisation, mean it is often marginalised. At events such as the UN Food Systems Summit, for example, corporate stakeholders guide policy decisions while vulnerable farmers can feel sidelined.
Agroecology focuses on both ecological and social principles. Shutterstock
Transforming our food systems
Despite regenerative agriculture’s popularity and its focus on sustainable food production, it fails to tackle systemic social and political issues. As a result, the movement may perpetuate business-as-usual in the food system, rather than transform it.
But our food system includes many landscapes and cultures. That means regenerative agriculture could still support more sustainable farming in some settings – though it’s not a catch-all solution.
And voices in regenerative agriculture have called for a shift in the movement’s agenda, putting more emphasis on equity, justice and diversity. So there is hope yet that the movement may help turn the tide against industrial agriculture.
Injured limbs need rest. They are often kept in a sling or cast to immobilise them as a way to promote healing. But that can mean smaller and weaker muscles several weeks later. It takes a long time to rehabilitate these muscles and muscle strength and function may not be fully restored for some people.
Experts are learning more and more about the “cross-education effect” where training one side of the body results in an increased strength of the opposite side of the body. Our recent study shows it can also stop muscle wasting in the “unused” arm.
So, how can we harness that effect?
How it works
First discovered 100 years ago, the mechanisms underpinning the cross-education effect have not been fully clarified yet. But it is likely associated with neural adaptations in the motor cortex of the brain that controls movement in the body.
Researchers have reviewed almost 100 studies and showed the average cross-body transfer ratio between the strength gain in the trained muscle to non-trained muscle ranged from 48% to 77%. So, if your trained arm strength increased by 20% after training the same muscle of your non-trained arm strength might increase by 10% even though you did nothing with that arm.
Such changes could be due to increased cortical excitability (the brain activity to control movement), reduced cortical inhibition (the signal to stop movements), reduced inter-hemispheric inhibition (the signals that direct movement instructions to one side of the body but not the other), changes in voluntary activation or new brain regions getting switched on.
It appears the type of muscle contraction in the training affects the extent of the cross-education effect.
There are three types of muscle contractions:
isometric (static) where the force produced by a muscle is equal to the load to the muscle, such as holding a dumbbell
concentric (shortening) in which force is greater than load, such as lifting a dumbbell
eccentric (lengthening) in which force is less than load, such as lowering a dumbbell.
Muscles can produce greater force during eccentric than isometric or concentric contractions. And less fatigue is induced during eccentric than other contractions. Resistance exercises – when muscles work against a weight or force – increase muscular strength and endurance using these types of muscle contractions.
Several studies report exercise consisting of eccentric-only muscle contractions (say, lowering a dumbbell but not lifting it) produces greater cross-education effect than exercise consisting of concentric-only (lifting only) or concentric-eccentric contractions (lifting and lowering).
One study showed eccentric exercise training affected brain-spine responses and stopping (inhibition) signals of the untrained limb to a greater extent than concentric training.
Lowering a dumbbell is an example of an eccentric exercise. Shutterstock
In 2021, we compared eccentric and concentric resistance exercise training for cross-education effect in which 18 young people (aged 20–23) performed progressive elbow flexor resistance training with one arm twice a week for five weeks using a dumbbell.
Both eccentric (lengthening) and concentric (shortening) training groups increased muscle strength similarly after the training (by 23 to 26%) for the trained arm. But the non-trained arm showed greater strength increase after eccentric (23%) than concentric training (12%). The cross-body transfer ratio (the correspondence between the strength gain in both sides) was much greater (91%) for eccentric training when participants lowered a dumbbell only compared to concentric training (49%) when they lifted it.
This tallies with our previous study that showed greater strength gains and cross-education effect from eccentric training.
Published in February, our most recent study involved 12 young men and showed how training one arm can prevent weakening of the other. No training saw muscle strength and size of the inactive arm reduced by up to 17%. Concentric training reduced the loss to to 4%. But eccentric training increased the immobilised arm strength by 4% and completely abolished atrophy (muscle wasting).
These findings support the recommendation of resistance training using eccentric or lengthening movements of the non-immobilised limb to prevent muscle strength loss and atrophy in real injuries such as ligament sprains and tears or bone fractures and after surgery.
This type of training has not been used extensively in rehabilitation so far. Further investigation into the mechanisms at play is needed but our findings could inform changes to how rehabilitation is implemented.
If you’re injured and or have had surgery and have an arm or leg immobilised, it’s worth discussing with your doctor, surgeon or physio whether exercising the corresponding limb on your good side – especially with lengthening movements against resistance or with a weight – could be worth trying.
Ken Nosaka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
More than a million Australians have tuned in to Alone Australia, SBS’s highest-rating series for 2023 to date. What is it about this program that’s got us so hooked? And what can it tell us about our own relationships with nature?
The series started with ten contestants dropped off in a remote area of Lutruwita/Tasmania. The aim is to survive alone for as long as possible. Each contestant is relying on their ability to find food, create adequate shelter and contend with isolation from people.
Each contestant’s experiences have been shaped, in part, by their unique relationship with nature. We all value and experience nature in different ways.
As armchair experts watching from home, we may reflect on how we would act if we had to survive alone in a remote place. How might our own relationship with nature shape our actions?
Watching Alone Australia may generate the sense that nature, and nature experiences, happen “out there” away from urban places and other people. This narrative has been fuelled by media, including David Attenborough’s awe-inspiring nature documentaries, which paint nature and humans as separate. While this kind of media can inspire fascination with nature, it can be damaging if it perpetuates an idea that humans are separate from nature.
Nature is all around us, including in our cities. Indeed, one-third of Australia’s threatened species live in cities.
This means that what urban residents (that’s most of us) actually do is important for helping nature to survive and thrive. And there are many easy things we can do.
Your relationship with nature is part of your identity. This relationship is shaped by values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. It’s personal and it’s cultural.
Alone Australia demonstrates how humans value nature in different ways. The show helps us widen our view of valuing nature from what it provides for us (instrumental/utilitarian values) to seeing beauty and worth in nature itself (intrinsic values).
Some contestants value nature from an even broader perspective (relational values) as they reveal their deep, caring, reciprocal and even spiritual relationship with the natural world.
Previous overseas seasons of Alone have highlighted utilitarian nature relationships, with most contestants being white male survivalists. This season, the first in Australia, includes people from different cultures and genders, including First Nations peoples. This has highlighted different types of human-nature relationships, including spiritual and nature-as-kin relationships.
Experiences in nature early in life shape these relationships. In their “flashback” footage, several contestants express gratitude to their parents for early experiences of nature.
For those of us with children, this might inspire us to help shape our child’s “nature identity”. Meaningful nature experiences can include looking after nature (gardening, indoor plants), bushwalks, visiting botanical gardens, or getting up close and personal with wildlife at your local zoo.
Nature as medicine
Being in nature is good for us. It might seem like the moments of awe and self-discovery in nature that we have seen Alone Australia contestants experience can only happen in these “out there” places. But these experiences can happen anywhere – if we seek them out.
For two Alone Australia contestants, in particular, their experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder (Chris) and the loss of a child (Gina) have been harrowing. Both describe how nature provides them with solace and healing.
For several contestants, craving connection with people was the reason to head home. Others seek kinship with nature. For example, ecologist Kate befriends her local possum family and Gina delights in regular visits by a platypus.
For First Nations man Duane, the experience strengthened his connection to Country, but experiencing that connection with family was critical:
It’s about oneness with nature, but sharing it collectively – kindness, actions towards others, not being alone out there.
TV nature content like Alone Australia is educational. As the remaining contestants find food and other resources, we learn about plant and animal species and their use by the Palawa people, the Traditional Custodians of the land.
This might prompt viewers to find out more about the plants and animals in their own local environments. Indeed, recent renewed interest in urban foraging has been touted as cementing our connections to place and sense of belonging.
We need nature, and nature needs us
Alone Australia highlights our complete interdependence with nature. Ultimately, everything we need for survival, including clean water, shelter and food, is derived from nature, even when we live in a city. The “successes” of the contestants are determined by their ability to understand their relationship to the land and how to meet their basic survival needs.
If we broaden our view of nature and see ourselves as interwoven in nature’s rich tapestry, as many of the contestants do, we can gain more than basic survival. We can improve our wellbeing while feeling kinship with the more-than-human, and a sense of responsibility to care for it.
People who feel connected to nature are more likely to protect it. If TV nature content such as Alone Australia encourages us to reflect on our relationship with nature and seek meaningful moments with nature and nature knowledge, then perhaps it might lead us to strengthen our environmental identities and act as nature stewards. And that’s a great outcome for people and the planet.
Lily van Eeden receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University), and ICON Science (RMIT University).
Christina Renowden receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research and BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University).
Fern Hames receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA). She is affiliated with the Arthur Rylah Institute for Enviromental Research in DEECA, and Monash University.
Kate Lee receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research and the University of Melbourne.
Melissa Hatty receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and the NSW Office of Energy and Climate Change through her affiliation with BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University). She has previously received funding from DEECA, the Biodiversity Council, Melbourne Water, and WWF Australia.
Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and the Victorian Department of Land, Water, Environment and Planning. She is a Lead Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF’s Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s visit to New Caledonia a few weeks ago made few headlines. In fact, it barely made the news.
Yet, her visit came at a crucial juncture for the French overseas territory, which is trying to negotiate a viable path towards a lasting self-determination, which balances the rights of New Caledonia’s Indigenous populations with the political reality of three failed independence referendums.
A new country is still emerging just off Australia’s coast, albeit in a slow path towards decolonisation in a process guided, but not governed, by France.
Self-determination is not a straightforward path
Officially, the subject of sovereignty has been put to bed for a while, with the defeat of the most recent referendum on full independence in late 2021. A large majority voted to remain part of France, albeit with a very low turnout rate.
However, the main pro-independence group, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) refused to recognise the result, as most Indigenous New Caledonians had boycotted the poll due to the traditional burial and mourning rituals following a high number of COVID deaths in the community.
Talks resumed in Paris last month around the validity of the third independence referendum in 2021 and on ways to devolve powers further.
Even the fact the Ministry of Overseas France, which oversees France’s vast remaining colonial holdings, is still talking about these things is in stark contrast to the Anglo-Saxon, winner-takes-all approach to referendums.
In the case of New Caledonia and other former French possessions, there is an understanding that issues as complex as Indigenous rights take time and patience to explain and execute. And that systems and institutions need time to gain trust.
Before Wong became the first Australian minister ever to address New Caledonia’s Congress, she first met representatives of the Customary Senate, a 16-member Indigenous body that consults with the government on issues related to the Indigenous Kanak people.
As Wong diplomatically put it in her address to the legislature, “New Caledonia is at a complex, historic juncture”. Its path to decolonisation is not a straightforward question of restoring power to the traditional owners of the land.
Indigenous Melanesians, who reclaimed the once-pejorative term “canaques” and adopted the word Kanak for themselves, make up 40% of the population. A further 10% is made up of Polynesians (largely from Tahiti or another French Pacific territory, Wallis and Futuna).
Despite a long colonial history – first as a penal colony, and later as a destination for French free settlers – New Caledonia’s European population has only ever accounted for 40% of the population. Today, around a quarter of the 270,000 New Caledonians identify as having European heritage.
But almost as large as the European population are those of mixed heritage. A legacy of colonisation, workers from Vietnam, Vanuatu, Algeria and other former French colonies settled in New Caledonia, married and had children. These New Caledonians often hold the balance of power in the political process.
As a result, a complex web of power-sharing structures has emerged over the past 20 years to give a voice to all New Caledonians. There are three provincial governments. One, called South Province, is centred around the capital, Nouméa, on the main island and is home to two-thirds of the population and the majority of the economic activity.
To balance out the disproportionate power of Greater Nouméa, two other provinces, North and Loyalty Islands, were established. Both have Kanak majority populations.
This seemingly unwieldy power structure has been designed from the bottom up. The basic law of New Caledonia, as enshrined in an amendment to the French constitution, is referred to as “organic law” because it is not prescriptive, but rather, flexible.
For example, while some local councils hold elections for the Customary Senate seats, others do not. This is true to the spirit of the organic law – that each Kanak tribe can determine its own system, under a broad umbrella.
Charting a path forward
The French state has progressively devolved power to New Caledonia since the historic Nouméa Accord of May 1998. Its predecessor, the Matignon Accord, was essentially a peace agreement that ended an occasionally bloody campaign for independence from France, led by the the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front.
Today, the coalition holds 20 of the 54 seats in the quasi-federal parliament that Wong addressed. And, in December, Louis Mapou became the first independence politician to hold the post of president of New Caledonia.
The coalition’s mission remains a sovereign, independent New Caledonia, or Kanaky (the group’s preferred name for the new country). Yet, given the complex demographics, it has failed to win a majority in three referendums.
For now, the country remains a French territory, albeit one with substantial autonomy. France maintains responsibility for defence, internal security and currency controls.
But New Caledonia now has many of the rights associated with statehood, including a New Caledonian citizenship that sits alongside French. It now has the right to conduct foreign policy and trade talks with its Pacific neighbours. Japan recently opened a consulate in Nouméa and other countries are beefing up their presence to counter Chinese influence in the region.
This most recent devolution of powers made Nouméa an obvious stop for Wong, who also visited Tuvalu on the same trip, completing her pledge to visit every member of the 17-member Pacific Islands Forum in her first year.
In doing so, on Djubéa-Kaponé land, she pledged deeper partnership with a key regional ally and one of the world’s largest nickel producers. And she gained insight into one of the world’s most ambitious power-sharing structures created since the fall of apartheid in South Africa.
Justin Wastnage has previously received funding from the French Ministry of Overseas France and has written a tourism guide to New Caledonia funded by the South Province government of New Caledonia.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s visit to New Caledonia a few weeks ago made few headlines. In fact, it barely made the news.
Yet, her visit came at a crucial juncture for the French overseas territory, which is trying to negotiate a viable path towards a lasting self-determination, which balances the rights of New Caledonia’s Indigenous populations with the political reality of three failed independence referendums.
A new country is still emerging just off Australia’s coast, albeit in a slow path towards decolonisation in a process guided, but not governed, by France.
Self-determination is not a straightforward path
Officially, the subject of sovereignty has been put to bed for a while, with the defeat of the most recent referendum on full independence in late 2021. A large majority voted to remain part of France, albeit with a very low turnout rate.
However, the main pro-independence group, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) refused to recognise the result, as most Indigenous New Caledonians had boycotted the poll due to the traditional burial and mourning rituals following a high number of COVID deaths in the community.
Talks resumed in Paris last month around the validity of the third independence referendum in 2021 and on ways to devolve powers further.
Even the fact the Ministry of Overseas France, which oversees France’s vast remaining colonial holdings, is still talking about these things is in stark contrast to the Anglo-Saxon, winner-takes-all approach to referendums.
In the case of New Caledonia and other former French possessions, there is an understanding that issues as complex as Indigenous rights take time and patience to explain and execute. And that systems and institutions need time to gain trust.
Before Wong became the first Australian minister ever to address New Caledonia’s Congress, she first met representatives of the Customary Senate, a 16-member Indigenous body that consults with the government on issues related to the Indigenous Kanak people.
As Wong diplomatically put it in her address to the legislature, “New Caledonia is at a complex, historic juncture”. Its path to decolonisation is not a straightforward question of restoring power to the traditional owners of the land.
Indigenous Melanesians, who reclaimed the once-pejorative term “canaques” and adopted the word Kanak for themselves, make up 40% of the population. A further 10% is made up of Polynesians (largely from Tahiti or another French Pacific territory, Wallis and Futuna).
Despite a long colonial history – first as a penal colony, and later as a destination for French free settlers – New Caledonia’s European population has only ever accounted for 40% of the population. Today, around a quarter of the 270,000 New Caledonians identify as having European heritage.
But almost as large as the European population are those of mixed heritage. A legacy of colonisation, workers from Vietnam, Vanuatu, Algeria and other former French colonies settled in New Caledonia, married and had children. These New Caledonians often hold the balance of power in the political process.
As a result, a complex web of power-sharing structures has emerged over the past 20 years to give a voice to all New Caledonians. There are three provincial governments. One, called South Province, is centred around the capital, Nouméa, on the main island and is home to two-thirds of the population and the majority of the economic activity.
To balance out the disproportionate power of Greater Nouméa, two other provinces, North and Loyalty Islands, were established. Both have Kanak majority populations.
This seemingly unwieldy power structure has been designed from the bottom up. The basic law of New Caledonia, as enshrined in an amendment to the French constitution, is referred to as “organic law” because it is not prescriptive, but rather, flexible.
For example, while some local councils hold elections for the Customary Senate seats, others do not. This is true to the spirit of the organic law – that each Kanak tribe can determine its own system, under a broad umbrella.
Charting a path forward
The French state has progressively devolved power to New Caledonia since the historic Nouméa Accord of May 1998. Its predecessor, the Matignon Accord, was essentially a peace agreement that ended an occasionally bloody campaign for independence from France, led by the the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front.
Today, the coalition holds 20 of the 54 seats in the quasi-federal parliament that Wong addressed. And, in December, Louis Mapou became the first independence politician to hold the post of president of New Caledonia.
The coalition’s mission remains a sovereign, independent New Caledonia, or Kanaky (the group’s preferred name for the new country). Yet, given the complex demographics, it has failed to win a majority in three referendums.
For now, the country remains a French territory, albeit one with substantial autonomy. France maintains responsibility for defence, internal security and currency controls.
But New Caledonia now has many of the rights associated with statehood, including a New Caledonian citizenship that sits alongside French. It now has the right to conduct foreign policy and trade talks with its Pacific neighbours. Japan recently opened a consulate in Nouméa and other countries are beefing up their presence to counter Chinese influence in the region.
This most recent devolution of powers made Nouméa an obvious stop for Wong, who also visited Tuvalu on the same trip, completing her pledge to visit every member of the 17-member Pacific Islands Forum in her first year.
In doing so, on Djubéa-Kaponé land, she pledged deeper partnership with a key regional ally and one of the world’s largest nickel producers. And she gained insight into one of the world’s most ambitious power-sharing structures created since the fall of apartheid in South Africa.
Justin Wastnage has previously received funding from the French Ministry of Overseas France and has written a tourism guide to New Caledonia funded by the South Province government of New Caledonia.
Imagine a world where computers can solve complex problems in seconds, making our current devices seem like mere typewriters. These supercomputers would revolutionise industries, create new medicines, and even help combat climate change.
Imagine as well we could observe the workings of our own bodies in unprecedented detail, and communicate online without fear of hacking. This may be starting to sound like a sci-fi novel, but quantum technologies have the potential to make it all real.
Australia has just unveiled its first National Quantum Strategy. The strategy aims to make Australia “a leader of the global quantum industry” by 2030, by encouraging research, applications and commercialisation.
So what does that actually mean?
What are quantum technologies?
Quantum technologies build on the science of quantum mechanics, which studies the behaviour of subatomic particles at a microscopic scale.
At this level, particles behave strangely: they can exist in multiple states simultaneously (called superposition), and be “entangled” with each other. When particles are entangled, their properties are linked together regardless of the distance between them.
Quantum technologies make use of these counterintuitive properties to achieve things that might otherwise be impossible. Three main areas of quantum technology are gaining the most attention: quantum sensing, quantum communications, and quantum computing.
Quantum sensing can detect tiny changes in the environment, measuring things like gravity, magnetic fields and temperature with incredible accuracy. This technology could have a huge impact on industries like healthcare, mining and navigation.
Unlike traditional computers, which store and process information using bits (zeroes and ones), quantum computers use “qubits”, which can exist as zeroes, ones, or combinations of both at once.
Quantum computers may be able to crack problems that are currently impossible to solve. Shutterstock
Fully functioning quantum computers don’t exist yet – but scientists believe they will be able to perform certain kinds of calculations at lightning speed, solving some problems that would take today’s computers millions of years to crack. This would have huge implications for fields including cryptography, AI, drug discovery, and climate modelling.
Australia’s National Quantum Strategy sees us join other countries and regions, racing to unlock the potential of quantum technology and dominate the market. The United States, China, and Europe are investing billions of dollars in quantum research and development.
If Australia wants to keep up, it needs to act now. But why is keeping up so important?
First, we don’t want to be left behind in the rapidly growing quantum technology industry. According to CSIRO projections, the quantum industry could be worth A$4.6 billion by the end of the decade. By 2045, it might employ as many people as the oil and gas sector does today, with revenues of $6 billion and 19,400 direct jobs.
As other nations push forward, Australia risks missing out on the potential economic benefits. We could also lose talented workers to countries that are investing more in quantum research. Projects like the ambitious attempt to build the world’s first complete quantum computer aim to provide local opportunities and funding alongside their top-line goals.
Moreover, Australia has a responsibility to ensure quantum technologies are developed and used ethically, and their risks managed.
For example, quantum computers could enable hackers to break existing encryption protocols, leaving internet services vulnerable. Data harvesting by companies is already a concern, and quantum computing could exacerbate this issue. Even national security could be jeopardised by quantum decryption.
Responsible innovation
To make the most of the power of quantum technology, we need to be proactive, focus on the public good, and think about it from many perspectives to ensure “responsible innovation”.
Collaboration and broad dialogue will be necessary. Conversations between experts in fields like quantum computing, cybersecurity, ethics and social sciences – perhaps via regular conferences or workshops – will help us tackle the technical and ethical risks.
Engaging with society and focusing on the public good will also be essential. The public must be involved in discussions to ensure new quantum technologies benefit everyone, not just businesses. Town hall meetings, public forums or online chats can help scientists, policymakers and citizens share views.
And we must make sure that “responsibility” always sits right alongside “innovation” in quantum technologies. Organisations working on quantum tech could have “responsible quantum committees” to address risks and involve stakeholders, ensuring responsible innovation in quantum technology.
Success in quantum technology will be all about striking the right balance: encouraging both innovation and responsibility. By investing in quantum technology and working together to ensure its responsible development, Australia can continue to be a leader in scientific innovation while benefiting from these emerging technologies’ transformative potential.
Australia’s National Quantum Strategy is a step in this direction.
Jarryd Daymond is an associate researcher on a project funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Targeted Translation Research Accelerator (TTRA).
Most diamonds are formed deep inside Earth and brought close to the surface in small yet powerful volcanic eruptions of a kind of rock called “kimberlite”.
Our supercomputer modelling, published in Nature Geoscience, shows these eruptions are fuelled by giant “pillars of heat” rooted 2,900 kilometres below ground, just above our planet’s core.
Understanding Earth’s internal history can be used to target mineral reserves – not only diamonds, but also crucial minerals such as nickel and rare earth elements.
Kimberlite and hot blobs
Kimberlite eruptions leave behind a characteristic deep, carrot-shaped “pipe” of kimberlite rock, which often contains diamonds. Hundreds of these eruptions that occurred over the past 200 million years have been discovered around the world. Most of them were found in Canada (178 eruptions), South Africa (158), Angola (71) and Brazil (70).
Between Earth’s solid crust and molten core is the mantle, a thick layer of slightly goopy hot rock. For decades, geophysicists have used computers to study how the mantle slowly flows over long periods of time.
In the 1980s, one study showed that kimberlite eruptions might be linked to small thermal plumes in the mantle – feather-like upward jets of hot mantle rising due to their higher buoyancy – beneath slowly moving continents.
It had already been argued, in the 1970s, that these plumes might originate from the boundary between the mantle and the core, at a depth of 2,900km.
Then, in 2010, geologists proposed that kimberlite eruptions could be explained by thermal plumes arising from the edges of two deep, hot blobs anchored under Africa and the Pacific Ocean.
And last year, we reported that these anchored blobs are more mobile than we thought.
However, we still didn’t know exactly how activity deep in the mantle was driving kimberlite eruptions.
Pillars of heat
Geologists assumed that mantle plumes could be responsible for igniting kimberlite eruptions. However, there was still a big question remaining: how was heat being transported from the deep Earth up to the kimberlites?
A snapshot of the global mantle convection model centred on subduction underneath the South American plate. Ömer F. Bodur, Author provided
To address this question, we used supercomputers in Canberra, Australia to create three-dimensional geodynamic models of Earth’s mantle. Our models account for the movement of continents on the surface and into the mantle over the past one billion years.
We calculated the movements of heat upward from the core and discovered that broad mantle upwellings, or “pillars of heat”, connect the very deep Earth to the surface. Our modelling shows these pillars supply heat underneath kimberlites, and they explain most kimberlite eruptions over the past 200 million years.
A schematic representation of Earth’s heat pillars and how they bring heat to kimberlites, based on output from our geodynamic model. Ömer F. Bodur, Author provided
The model successfully captured kimberlite eruptions in Africa, Brazil, Russia and partly in the United States and Canada. Our models also predict previously undiscovered kimberlite eruptions occurred in East Antarctica and the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia.
Earth’s “pillars of heat” in a global mantle convection model can be used to predict kimberlite eruptions. Credit: Ömer F. Bodur.
Towards the centre of the pillars, mantle plumes rise much faster and carry dense material across the mantle, which may explain chemical differences between kimberlites in different continents.
Our models do not explain some of the kimberlites in Canada, which might be related to a different geological process called “plate subduction”. We have so far predicted kimberlites back to one billion years ago, which is the current limit of reconstructions of tectonic plate movements.
Ömer Bodur was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.
Nicolas Flament receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.
Homeless tents in Musgrave Park, BrisbanePhoto: Dorina Pojani, Author provided
As Australia’s housing crisis deepens, governments at all levels are being called on to help. The federal budget will be handed down today, and housing will be a key talking point.
The current public debate about housing is focused on “silver bullet” solutions. What is needed instead is a comprehensive package of bold interventions, coordinated between all levels of government and the private sector.
While home ownership has been the Australian tradition, it should not be the only option for secure and affordable housing. Tenants, particularly long-term or life-long tenants, must be supported as much as aspiring home owners. Rental housing policies, as opposed to policies aimed at construction, have an immediate widespread impact on housing affordability and security of tenure.
5 policies for rental housing
Here are five key measures for the rental market:
1. Caps on annual rent increases. These have been common in Western Europe and parts of North America. Allowable increases should be tied to the inflation rate. This will provide owners with adequate income to maintain the property while providing security for renters.
2. No-fault eviction controls. Such policies typically accompany caps on annual rent increases. They protect long-term tenants from many risks, including revenge evictions of tenants who make a complaint and disruptive digital platforms such as Airbnb. Exceptions could be made in cases in which owners and tenants are living on the same properties, since such transactions may be personal as well as financial.
3. Rent assistance. This can be in the form of housing vouchers delivered directly to tenants. The National Rental Affordability Scheme approach of working with landlords is also effective. The amounts of rental assistance should be adjusted to reflect the actual rental cost trends of recent years.
4. Social and public housing rentals. These include apartments built by the public or non-profit sectors to rent at affordable prices. To avoid stigmatisation and ghettoisation, social housing should house people on a range of incomes. Some buildings may even offer rent-to-own options.
5. Student housing. While education is Australia’s third-largest export, students – both domestic and international – receive little accommodation help. This puts them at risk of exploitation and increases the overall housing pressure. Universities must be required to provide affordable dormitories on campus for the students they enrol.
5 policies for home ownership
Assistance for people who wish to buy a home but have low incomes and lack access to the “bank of mum and dad” must be guided by the principle that affordable housing is a necessity, just like healthcare and schooling. With that in mind, the government should prioritise the following measures:
6. Increases in market-rate housing supply. If enough housing is built to meet buyer demand, and the population remains stable in an area, house prices at the metropolitan level will reduce. That’s the law of supply and demand.
Height bonuses and tax incentives should be provided to developers who build dense housing – especially in inner cities and next to public transport stations. New housing should be in the form of townhouses, condominium towers of varied sizes, and even tiny houses and co-housing compounds where households live as a community with shared spaces.
The negative phenomenon of NIMBYism should be resisted. It stems from upper-income classes who cast themselves as progressives defending the local character while in fact they seek exclusivity.
7. Auxiliary units. Where larger lots cannot be assembled for higher-density housing, the construction of small secondary units next to (or even within) existing houses should be encouraged. To this end, requirements around minimum lot sizes and parking provision should be relaxed. Auxiliary units can serve, among other things, to house older home owners who wish to downsize – hence their traditional name “granny flat”.
8. Inclusionary units. These are units in new developments that are sold at below-market rates to qualifying lower-income households. Offering a percentage of inclusionary units in large-scale developments should be required nationwide. Inclusionary housing would lead to adjustments in land values rather than making projects unviable.
9. Transition housing. This type of housing is for people in crisis situations, such as victims of domestic violence, or who are homeless. It must be free and combined with support services. It largely pays for itself because it offsets the social costs of homelessness and offers major benefits for the beneficiaries.
Why haven’t the problems with our housing system been fixed yet? Why was the crisis allowed to develop in the first place? Because many profit a great deal from a broken housing system – disregarding the inequalities and gentrification waves that come about as a result.
Australian society should come to share an understanding that a dwelling is a space needed for living. It is not a vehicle to store and showcase wealth and extract excessive rents from the “houseless”. Nor is its purpose to sustain class divisions from one generation to the next.
Ignoring the housing crisis will result in the Brazilianization of Australia, changing us into a country of high inequality and exclusion in our lifetime. This represents a dark future in which Australia’s long-held myth of a classless society will be shattered.
Dorina Pojani has received funding from the ARC, AURIN, the EFL Foundation, and the AAD Foundation.
Mother’s Day is coming up in Australia and that means a surge in perfume sales. Of course, scents are purchased year-round and not just for mothers. Fragrance sales in Australia will amount to over A$1 billion this year.
The word “perfume” is derived from the Latin per fumus, meaning “through smoke”. The very first account of using perfumes dates back to 1200 BC when a woman called Tapputi mixed flowers, oils and various plants with water or solvents, then extracted their fragrance. The basis of this technique for making perfume is still used today.
But how do we smell? What makes perfume appealing? And why does it smell differently on different people?
A sense of smell is vital to all species on Earth. One study identified African elephants as having the “best noses” in the animal kingdom, not to mention the longest ones. It can help animals sniff out danger, food and mates.
For humans, too, being able to smell is not just for the enjoyment of pleasant odours. It can also protect us from toxic chemicals with noxious smells, such as hydrogen cyanide.
When something has an odour, it means it is chemically volatile – vaporising from a liquid to a gas. When we smell a scent, gas molecules enter our nose and stimulate specialised nerve cells called olfactory sensory neurons. When these neurons are triggered, they send a signal to the brain to identify the chemicals.
Humans have around 10 million of those neurons and around 400 scent receptors. The human nose can distinguish at least 1 trillion different odours, from freshly brewed coffee to wet dog to mouldy cheese.
The more volatile a compound is the lower its boiling point and, from a chemical perspective, the weaker the forces holding the molecules together. When this is the case, more molecules enter the gaseous state and the smell is more intense.
Certain classes of chemical compounds smell better than others. Pexels/Ron Lach, CC BY
Different classes of chemical compounds can have more pleasant or offensive scents.
Fish and decaying animal cells, for example, release chemicals called amines, which don’t smell appealing.
Fruits, on the other hand, are composed of chemicals in a class of organic compounds called aldehydes, esters and ketones, which have sweeter and more pleasant odours.
Chemists have been able to identify the specific chemical smells released by substances we encounter in everyday life.
Smells different
So it makes sense that pleasant-smelling aldehydes, ketones and esters are used to create perfumes. However, some perfumes also contain unusual ingredients that don’t smell nice on their own.
For example, Chanel No. 5 perfume – the iconic 100-year-old favourite – contains civet as one of its base chemical notes. Civet is used by perfumers for its long-lasting, musky scent. It is traditionally extracted from the anal glands of civet cats but Chanel has used a synthetic form of civet since 1998.
Today, perfumers can use synthetic civet in place of the real thing. Shutterstock
Our ability to smell a perfume will depend on two factors: how well our olfactory sensory neurons are performing (a virus or infection could affect function, for example) and the volatility of the chemicals in the perfume.
1. Try before you buy
You can’t really do much about your sensory neurons, but you can increase the intensity of perfumes, such as by warming up the perfume on your skin or applying to pulse points. This will help to give molecules more energy and increase the number of molecules entering the gaseous state.
Specific perfumes will not smell the same on different people’s skin because the chemicals in them can be affected by the skin’s type and condition (dry or oily, acidic or base) and even their diet. Some foods we eat, such as garlic, are released from our bodies through our skin. Those chemicals can mask perfume chemicals.
So, it is better to buy someone their tried and true favourite scent rather than risking a new one. And those department store sample sprays can be useful to try before you buy.
2. Moisturise before use
When you spray perfume on very dry skin, some of the perfume’s chemicals – the large organic ones that are similar to skin’s natural oils – are absorbed by the skin and then into the sebaceous glands. When some notes in a perfume are absorbed this way, it can take on a different smell. That’s also why it’s better to moisturise skin before spraying perfume, so perfume chemicals stay on the skin for longer.
Try before you buy – scents smell different on different people. Pexels/Ron Lach, CC BY
3. Experiment with spraying techniques
To avoid changes in the scent of your favourite perfume and increase the time the perfume stays on you, you could spray your hair instead. Your hair is porous so perfume molecules might remain there longer. However, most perfumes contain alcohol, which dries out hair. Spraying perfume directly onto a hairbrush first, then brushing your hair, might prevent some of this drying effect.
Spraying then walking through a mist of perfume so the chemicals settle on your hair, skin and clothes might work – but you risk losing a lot of precious perfume with that technique.
4. Keep it cool
Temperature will affect volatility. To keep perfumes lasting longer in the bottle, keep them in the fridge or cool dark place and tightly sealed to prevent your expensive, heat-sensitive scent evaporating into thin air.
Magdalena Wajrak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The permit was eventually granted because the application was lodged just before the government’s 2018 offshore exploration ban was in place. The High Court ruled it should therefore have been considered under the previous system.
It’s simply the latest twist in a long contest of ideas and ideologies. Between 2008 and 2017, Aotearoa New Zealand’s offshore environment was opened up for further oil and gas exploration on the promise of economic growth and energy independence.
The dominant narrative from the government and from industry was, at its core, that economic growth is essential, that oil was an untapped resource, and it would be irresponsible not to make use of it to generate capital and contribute to Aotearoa New Zealand’s economic development. During these nine years, the government sought to “secure” this resource.
The government took action to provide certainty and therefore security for overseas investors by cultivating ties with the fossil fuel industry. For example, when protest sought to disrupt oil and gas exploration activities, the government introduced legislation to curtail at-sea protest and offered only limited Māori and community engagement about commercial extraction activities in ocean spaces.
The story of the anti-deep sea oil campaign begins with increased efforts to entice transnational petroleum corporations to explore the country’s extensive Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Aotearoa New Zealand was among the first countries to embrace wholesale neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, and this approach to governance, economic, social and environmental policy and practice has become embedded over subsequent decades.
In 2008, John Key’s National-led government established what was described as a “Business Growth Agenda”, which included the sale of state assets, and the development of extractive industries. The orientation toward extractive industries was demonstrated through media that referred to an increasing need to catch up with Australia, and government ministers commenting on the need to make the “most use of the wealth hidden in our hills, under the ground and in our oceans”.
Deep Water Horizon and the Rena
The government’s agenda for the oil and gas sector described in its Business Growth Agenda didn’t go unnoticed by climate justice and environmental activists, nor iwi (tribal) groups, many of whom were already active against coal mining.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, as the government sought to deliver on its Business Growth Agenda, two further events sensitised the public to the risks of engaging in extractive industry in ocean environments and the power of corporates to elude their responsibilities.
First, the Rena disaster occurred in Tauranga, off the east coast of the North Island. The Rena was a container ship that ran aground on the Ōtāiti/Astrolabe reef in October 2011 while on its way into Tauranga Harbour. The ship broke up over a period of months, leaving fuel and debris from containers littered across the ocean and local beaches.
The second event, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, sensitised the public to the risks of offshore oil extraction. This disaster was a direct precursor to the emergence of the Oil Free campaign across Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Waiho Papa Moana hikoi protesting against deep sea drilling at the New Zealand Petroleum Summit in 2014. Phil Walter/Getty Images
Petrobras and the Raukūmara Basin
On the east coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, the iwi of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, with support from Greenpeace New Zealand, disrupted a large Brazilian petroleum company, Petrobras, from seismic surveying of the Raukūmara Basin in the EEZ.
The EEZ is an area over which a nation-state has partial sovereignty, including to extract resources, demarcated under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. It extends to approximately 200 nautical miles from the coastline. Petrobras had secured a five-year permit to explore for oil and gas under block offers released in 2010.
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui had requested that no exploration for oil and gas be undertaken in their area. Nevertheless, Petrobras informed Te Whānau-ā-Apanui that they would begin their seismic survey work in early 2011 and began work in April using the large survey vessel, the Orient Explorer.
Opposition to Petrobras began quickly both onshore and offshore, demanding “no drill, no spill”. A flotilla of five vessels sailed out to the seismic survey vessel to attempt to halt its work over a period of seven weeks, where actions included sailing in front of the survey vessel.
Following these events, a number of meetings were reportedly held between government agencies and industry representatives concerned by the lack of a regulatory regime in the EEZ and the risk of protesters disrupting lawful permitted activities. Petrobras warned the government that they would withdraw if community action continued.
Subsequently, a major piece of legislation was enacted as an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act 1991. This amendment criminalised protest at sea near a vessel engaged in oil and gas exploration or drilling.
The ‘Andarko amendment’
The amendment to the Crown Minerals Act was dubbed the “Anadarko amendment” after the Texan oil corporation that was active in Aotearoa New Zealand at the time. It was also a silent partner to the Deep Water Horizon rig responsible for the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The amendment contravened international human rights law, and went against a long tradition of protest at sea in Aotearoa New Zealand, by banning activists from coming within 500 metres of an oil and gas vessel. The Minister for Energy and Resources at the time said the protesters shouldn’t be trying to stop other people going about their lawful business.
While the Anadarko Amendment sought to provide assurances and security to fossil fuel companies, activists changed the financial equation by disrupting exploration, blockading banks who refused to divest from oil and gas, and protesting annual fossil fuel conferences.
Activists sought to secure a future that was not dependent on fossil fuels, and that both demanded and demonstrated a sense of responsibility and care for the impacts of continuing business as usual.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon has said his party will repeal the offshore oil and gas exploration ban if elected in 2023. Kerry Marshall/Getty Images
Change and uncertainty
In 2018, a newly elected government enacted legislation that banned all new oil and gas exploration permits in Aotearoa’s EEZ, with the exception of an area of active production off the west coast of the North Island in Taranaki.
At the time, media debate was polemical, either decrying the lost revenue and the impact it would have on the economy, or arguing it didn’t go far enough because it did not apply to existing permits.
At the beginning of 2021, the last existing exploration permit outside Taranaki was surrendered, with companies claiming a combination of the pandemic and pricing uncertainties as the primary reasons for withdrawal.
While we don’t suggest that these actions, or those of the current government in relation to climate change, are anywhere near enough, the Oil Free campaign successfully disrupted efforts to explore and extract from the “blue frontier” of Aotearoa New Zealand’s EEZ.
The campaign made it challenging for fossil fuel companies to do business here, and contested the government’s narratives about the need for exploration and production. Campaigners also narrated what a hopeful, climate-just world might look like.
But such a “win” could be precarious, with the opposition National Party claiming it will repeal the ban on new oil and gas exploration if elected in 2023. Indeed, the court case from earlier this year that revived an exploration permit demonstrates how messy and precarious stopping oil will be.
Amanda Thomas has recevied funding from Deep South National Science challenge in the past to research community responses to climate change. She has also been involved with climate justice community groups.
Gradon Diprose has received funding from Deep South National Science Challenge to research adaptation to climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Sophie Bond has received funding from the Deep South National Science Challenge for research on climate change adaptation, community engagement and local governance. She has also been involved with climate justice groups and research on community responses to climate change
That holiday was Australia’s first, declared by NSW Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788 to mark the birthday of George III. It must have seemed as strange to the new arrivals as to the Australians on whose land they had arrived.
It didn’t mark their safe arrival, it didn’t mark the raising of the Union Jack on Australian shores and it didn’t mark the founding of Sydney. Nor did it acknowledge the first peoples already on the continent.
These days the king’s birthday is even less relevant than it was.
The king no longer has the power to enact laws governing Australia. That finished when his mother Queen Elizabeth signed the Australia Act 1986, which ended the ability of the United Kingdom to make laws with respect to Australian states and the ability of Australian states to take disputes to the UK Privy Council.
But hiding in plain sight, just a month before the king’s birthday holiday, is a date most of us have a much better reason to celebrate – it’s May 9, which this year also happens to be budget day.
May 9 is the real Australia Day
Australia’s constitution was proclaimed on January 1 1901, but only had full effect when our first federal parliament met on May 9 1901, in the Exhibition Building in Melbourne.
The Opening, Commonwealth Parliament, Charles Nuttall, oil, 1901-1902. Museums Victoria
When the parliament moved to Canberra in 1927, the new temporary parliament house was again opened on May 9.
Six decades later, when the new and permanent parliament house was opened on Canberra’s Capital Hill in 1988, the date chosen was again May 9.
It is not simply these events that make May 9 the real Australia Day.
In his speech on May 9 1988, Prime Minister Bob Hawke said the new building would
become for our nation both the forum for our differences and the instrument of our unity – a building for all Australians, a parliament reflecting the diversity of our entire society and responding to the needs of the whole community.
And it has. In parliament, our local members and Senators take up issues that concern us and debate and resolve them. The legislation they have created ranges from the everyday to the extraordinary.
The 1918 Electoral Act required all electors to vote. The 1973 Medicare Act gave us the healthcare card we take for granted.
More exceptionally, the 2017 Marriage Amendment Act gave same-sex couples the right to marry, in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the population.
The 1967 referendum allowed the parliament to legislate for Indigenous Australians for the first time. If the Voice Referendum is passed, Indigenous Australians will get a constitutionally enshrined mechanism for making representations to it.
Our parliament is worth celebrating
What legitimates decisions made in Australia is that they come from a process that involves the Australian people, through the Australian parliament, rather than a structure outside Australia or beyond the ability of Australians to control.
We have changed the political complexion of the parliament many times, yet through it all the parliament has become more representative of us over time.
The first two women were elected in 1943. By 2022, we had 58 women in the House of Representatives, including 19 elected for the first time, and a female majority in the Senate.
The first Indigenous senator, Neville Bonner, was elected in 1971. By 2022, eight senators and three members of the House of Representatives identified as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Ten of our members of parliament are first-generation migrants, including government ministers Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong. Among the children of immigrants is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
I was born a British subject in 1945, in Sydney, to Australian-born parents. The 1948 Citizenship Act made me an Australian citizen alongside all British subjects living in Australia.
The Act also opened the way for “aliens” – those born outside the Commonwealth – to become naturalised Australian citizens. The king’s birthday can have little meaning for them or their locally born children.
Most migrants become citizens, and what has made this possible is an act of the Australian parliament.
How to make it happen
Making May 9 a public holiday is easy. It doesn’t require legislation and doesn’t require a referendum. January 26 was only proclaimed a national holiday in 1994.
May 9 has a much longer, more illustrious history. It is a date “made in Australia” and demonstrates our commitment to our democracy like no other day can.
By May 9 2026, our parliament will have been in place for 125 years. That makes 2026 a good year to become a republic. Should a referendum be successful, the first parliament of the Australian republic could meet on May 9 2026.
If it takes another year, the first parliament of the Australian republic could meet on the centenary of the opening of the first parliament house in Canberra, on May 9 2027.
I hope I live to celebrate that day. In the meantime, I’ll forego this year’s king’s birthday holiday and instead celebrate on May 9. The weather in most places should be okay for a barbecue, so why not join me, before it becomes official?
Anna Howe is a member of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Republican Movement
If you ever watched the Korean-Canadian television show Kim’s Convenience or the Taiwanese-American Fresh off the Boat, you would have felt seemingly content with the progress of Asian diasporic representation on mainstream screens.
More recently, there has been growing interest in the representation of cultural diversity on our screens and more broadly in our cultural institutions in the wake of #OscarsSoWhite and the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite controversy and some limitations, the Netflix series Beef is more complex and nuanced than many other onscreen renderings of first and second-generation migrants in the Global North.
This success can be attributed to the fact that it humanises migrants by focusing on their inner lives and not just on their cultural difference. It also helps that most of its directing and writing crew have lived experience of being othered.
New migrant tales
In 2023, Asian-American-themed content and creators have become even more central to the most powerful media industry, with the film Everything Everywhere All at Once sweeping several Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards.
Then, in April of this year, came a dark comedy called Beef produced by Netflix and A24, and starring Asian-American talent like Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in leading roles. What is new about these migrant tales is that their lead characters are as flawed, and have as much agency as those in an average drama series or psychological thriller with a majority white cast.
Why is the emotional heft of the series a talking point for both white and non-white audiences across the globe? Research on racial minorities and emotions suggests that those seen as socially less powerful are rarely allowed to be angry in the public domain.
Beef breaks this stigma by basing the fued between Yeun and Wong’s characters on a road rage incident in a parking lot in Southern California. As the anger escalates, it ruins their lives, but also serves as a valve for their repressed emotions as children of migrants who worked hard and were told not to complain.
Steven Yuen in Beef. Netflix
Emotion and inadequacy
What is also specific to the Asian-American condition, as writer Cathy Park Hong explores in her book of essays, Minor Feelings, is being seen as “emotionless functionaries” and having persistent feelings of inadequacy.
This is largely due to Asian-Americans and other racialised groups being cast as “model minorities” and often internalising this characterisation. Justifying immigration for economic reasons in most immigrant nations also drives a wedge between groups such as Asian-Americans and African-Americans.
The undercurrent of anger in Beef is shame that both Amy (Wong) and Danny (Yeun) have experienced since their respective childhoods due to personal and systemic circumstances. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying rise in anti-Asian racism in countries like the US and Australia, anxiety in these diverse communities has amplified and ally-ship initiatives with Black Lives Matter organisers have also come about.
In the creative realm, we have seen the desire for self-expression] to resist racism and hate.
Empathy, aspiration and belonging
While there is ample interest in anger, fear and hate in relation to race, politics and representation, my own work explores more ambivalent and complex emotions like empathy, aspiration and belonging in relation to migration.
It is in the exploration of these grey zones that Beef excels, showing us what is both universal and culturally specific about intergenerational trauma.
There is now some recognition that migrants who move from the Global South to the Global North for economic reasons aspire for more that just social mobility.
However, we see very little of their underlying emotions and how they shift over time in most screen drama. In Beef, when Amy visits her parents after a fight with her Japanese-American husband, her mother is both reticent to talk about the past and enjoying her present life of travelling. Danny undoes racial and masculine typecasting in one powerful scene where he breaks down in the middle of Korean church choir.
Amy and Danny belong to starkly different social milieus, with the latter working as a contractor and struggling to save for a house for his parents and the former owning a lifestyle small business on the verge of a multi-million dollar acquisition deal.
This small detail itself is noteworthy as it depicts the vast range of Asian-American class experiences, including Amy’s husband’s family who have cultural capital, hailing from the art world. This means that the characters’ economic aspirations look very different from one another and often mask a deeper desire for belonging.
Ali Wong in Beef. Netflix
A desire for belonging
Without giving away the final episode that is part surrealism and part culturally attuned therapy session, what is clear is that Beef gives permission to its feuding central characters and racial minority audience members to feel. These are feelings of wanting to be at home, to be loved unconditionally, to not be bullied, and ultimately to belong to wherever they happen to have been planted.
The overwhelming desire for belonging explored in Beef may resonate more with the children of migrants, or the second generation as they are sometimes referred to, but is has proven to be cathartic for a surprisingly broad range of viewers.
It works because it is a contemporary yet specific take on anger as an outlet for other emotions. It neither exoticises anger, nor does it render belonging colour-blind.
Sukhmani Khorana has received funding from the Australia Research Council, Diversity Arts Australia, the University of Wollongong and Western Sydney University for research on migration and mediated emotions.
